Language, Religion, and Linguistic Rights in Times of Crisis

Regular session: maximum five 20-minute presentations

What are the challenges that minority nations, national, cultural, and religious minorities face in multinational countries while navigating their linguistic difference in authoritarian or liberal regimes? How can we understand the relationship between language and religion in multinational countries? In which circumstances can we witness the triumph of one over the other? Both language and religion are markers of cultural identity, against which minorities in turn self-identifiy. From the nineteenth century to the 1960s, for instance, Catholic Church constituted the core identity of the French Canadians who considered themselves as a race distinct from the British through both their linguistic and religious identity markers (Zubrzycki 2016). Québécois nationalism of the 1960s, on the other hand, formed itself in opposition to Catholicism and adopted a secular identity entrenched in language and territory. Today, while states can be neutral towards religion, it is hard to see states being neutral towards language (Brubaker 2015, Kymlicka 1995, Van Parijs 2011). With respect to language, states must employ certain languages and impose an internal communication apparatus for their functioning. This session first seeks participants who can unpack the advocacy of linguistic rights in the public sphere among minority nations, national, cultural, and religious minorities in multinational states in times of crisis. Second, it welcomes presentations that empirically delve into the relationship between language and religion, which has not been studied extensively yet in the literature on multiculturalism in any sustained way (rather than merely presenting a juxtaposition).