 Welcome again everyone my name is Joey Love Strand I'm a postdoc oral fellow in linguistics at so as University of London and here just to host and get and launch this linguistics seminar on behalf of the Department of Linguistics. Today's MC is actually a guest who we've had here before Gerald Roche. Gerald is an anthropologist who's interested in languages, especially the intersection of languages with areas such as justice and rights. He is one of the contributors to a recently published handbook of linguistic human rights along with other members of today's panels publication that will be hearing about a bit today. He's also a senior research fellow at La Trobe University in Australia, and he is co chair of the global coalition of language rights which just two days ago was promoting and celebrating global language advocacy day and so here just two days after that day we're here to have a discussion with linguists from around the world about the topic of language rights saves lives so Gerald thank you for joining us thanks to all of you on the panel for joining us and helping us put this together, and we're really looking forward to this discussion. Thanks very much Joey. So I'll just start off by acknowledging that I'm speaking to you tonight from the, it's tonight in Australia, I'm speaking to you from the unseeded lands of the runjury people of the Kulin nation and what's known as Melbourne today. Since we're here to talk about language and rights and justice. I'll also mention that there's an ongoing struggle for language here the warung language and the boomerang languages are the two indigenous languages of this area, and both of these languages, the speakers are engaged for struggles to reclaim and revitalize those languages. So, I'll introduce a little bit about the event that we're going to have tonight but first, Joey's already introduced me I'm Gerald Roach. I will turn the microphone over to our participants so they can each introduce themselves in whatever way they feel comfortable. You can perhaps start with Shivani you can introduce yourself please and then pass on to the next participant and end up back at me. Hello everyone I'm Shivani. I'm an academic based in India. I largely work on issues of exclusion and marginalization and education, which also then brings me to question of language, caste, gender and others. I'm really looking forward to this interaction and hearing other participants on your questions. So thank you. Thank you Shivani perhaps next we can hear from Ahmed. Yeah, I'm Ahmed Kabul I teach at the at the Hawaii University in ifran in Morocco and my research interests are in language power. This is critical theory and social justice. And I pass it on to and I'm very delighted to be here today. So I pass it on to Tuva and Robert. Okay I'm Tuva Skutnab Kalmas from Finland and Robert and I live in Sweden after 30 years in Denmark on a farm. And I am interested in linguistic human rights which I started talking about some 60 years ago, then I didn't know that that kind of object existed. I'm a bilingual from birth, and have learned a few languages after that and I'm very sad that I have to use this imperialist language with you. Okay, I'm told as husband Robert Phillips and I called. I used to be British but I think I'm pretty hybrid having lived in other countries almost in my entire adult life. I'm notorious for having written a book called linguistic imperialism, which has to do with the role of English in the modern world and who decides what's happening to it but it's great to be with you today. Okay. Thanks everyone so just to introduce the purpose of this evening we have to two main things that we're here to talk about. We're going to put two questions to the panel that respond to each of them in answers of about five minutes each, then we'll open up to questions from the audience hopefully have a nice discussion later on. One of the topics that we're going to talk about one is Joey has mentioned them both one is related to Global Language Advocacy Day, which is an international event which was held for the second time on Wednesday this week. Global Language Advocacy Day is organized by the global coalition for language rights which I'm involved with. Global Language Rights is a volunteer network of activists, academics, concern citizens, translation professionals and so on, who all work together to promote publicly the importance of language rights and to support one another in the various work that we do whether it is ensuring language access to people in critical services like health and education or studying the abuses of linguistic human rights and so on. Global Language Advocacy Day is kind of a coordinated day of action where all the members of the coalition from around the world. Events like this one tried to raise awareness on social media about the importance of language rights, always focusing on a different theme each year so this year the theme for Global Language Advocacy Day is also the title of the talk for this evening which is Language Rights Save Lives. So the aim of focusing on this thing was to really highlight the ways in which recognizing and respecting linguistic human rights can literally be a matter of life and death for people in various circumstances and I expect we'll hear about some of those circumstances from the speakers this evening. The first one purpose is Global Language Advocacy Day and discussing this theme of language rights save lives we'll come to that in the second half where we're going to begin, however, is by launching this lovely new publication, the handbook of linguistic human rights which was edited by Tuva and Robert which I was lucky enough to contribute to which Ahmed and Shivani have also contributed chapters to. So we're going to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about what is the state of the art of the study of linguistic human rights at present within academia. What are the debates, what's the standing of the discipline and what is the significance of that handbook within this broader context so some of us, as we've heard have had long standing involvement in this debate around linguistic human rights. Some of us work on these issues in different fields. I'm an anthropologist in different contexts in relation to different issues such as education or healthcare and so on. So, I think, from the panelists that we have we should get a nice overview of this topic. So, we're going to start by talking about the handbook and going to pass a microphone to Robert, just with this first question of what do you see the state of the art of academic research on linguistic human rights as being currently and what's the contribution that this new handbook makes to that field. Thank you. Okay, thank you Gerald, and I will give you a quick sample of what the handbook covers linguistic justice is exemplified in many chapters in part three of the handbook case studies of linguistic human rights being violated in different parts of North America. I could have taken other areas as well. The first is on Nunavut in Northwest Canada, where financial support for Inuk Tut is a tiny fraction of what French gets, despite some legal autonomy, structural marginalization of Inuit interest and their languages continues. This is in chapter 19, written by a political leader, Aluki Kotiak. This is in chapter on brutal colonization in New Brunswick in the East, including policies of linguicide and historic side of the Malicites, who are reverting to the original name for their land. This is the language of the river people, which is in chapter 20 and the author, Andrea Bear Nicholas has for decades made strenuous efforts to revitalize the language successfully within certain frameworks. And there's also a more general history of linguistic human rights for indigenous peoples in the USA in chapter 21 by John Rainer. Part four of the handbook implementing linguistic human rights has an interesting presentation of Pueblo revitalization in education in Southwest United States by Christine Sims in chapter 38. And in Latin America, linguistic human rights from within language communities are seen as being in a time of promise in chapter 37 by Gabriela Perez Bayeth and Yasna Elina Aguirre Aguil. This is a challenge of analyzing the roller translation and interpretation for promoting for promoting linguistic human rights summarized by a Latino in Texas chapter 45 Gabriel Gonzales Nunez, which belongs in the part five the final part of the book which is called cross cutting issues in linguistic human rights. Medical researcher friend of mine is soon going to be in Utah for a conference. The organizers might mention the First Nations peoples with strong cultural legacies that continue to flourish in Utah. Navajo, payute, goshute and shoshone. But if this contextual reality is mentioned at the conference is probably tokenism, and definitely does not acknowledge the need for reparations for the dispossession of these people's territories, cultures and languages. That's what Gerald Rush was saying about the two languages where he is in Australia. Ahmed Cabell who's with us as a panelist makes the case in the book for reparative for reparations reparative linguistic justice in chapter 10 of the handbook in part one approaches to linguistic human rights, which is otherwise about various scholarly approaches to the whole issue of linguistic human rights law, economics, history, and, and, and, and a whole range of disciplines. The experience of compiling the entire handbook over the last three years, for told me leads us to write in our concluding afterward that we live in troubled times, and that few governments are committed to actively supporting minority languages. And that system was established to combat injustice and repression. This is extremely uphill in a world in which truth is no longer respected. Trump is in the USA, Boris Johnson in the UK, in what are supposed to be democracies. And though some European countries are also led by you autocrats, Orban in Hungary. China and Russia are dictatorships. And when Saudi Arabia became chair of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2015. These major constraints confirm the need for a handbook of linguistic human rights that reveals what needs to be done, what can be done, and what is being done successfully in some contexts. And now talk will continue. Similar to what Robert mentioned about Utah, many of our colleagues in the US and Canada have in their letterheads, well intentioned tokenisms about those on whose lands their universities are. Geraldo, yours was tokenism, by the way. At least this makes the original owners of the lands visible. But my note is indigenous peoples of course say that people don't own the land, the land owns the people. Even the very indigenous people says only a starter. It does in no way address the earlier and worldwide ongoing new colonialist and imperialist expropriation of their lands and waters. We're living what Nancy Fraser in her 2022 book calls cannibal capitalism, and it is getting worse day by day. So is there any hope. Do national and international laws, conventions and covenants held in achieving more linguistic justice to some extent. Yes, several chapters in the book gave a thorough descriptions of the history and present status of these legal documents. Many of the authors have worked more or less a lifetime with them. They point out some of the strengths the documents have, but also the many weaknesses. Several examples in the book show that even if states or international organizations, such as the United Nations can agree on some improvements on paper, implementing them is mostly a long struggle. In the Nunavut chapter in the book by Alok Kotjak, which Robert mentioned, and several earlier reports on the Nunavut situation have contended that the Canadian state is committing both linguistic and cultural genocide in the education of the inmates. The latest discussions about Nunavut earlier this February showed that the relevant Canadian high level politicians and civil servants. In this case, Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Paul Pelletier, Director General, Indigenous languages at the Department of Canadian Heritage are not willing to act. They only presented good sounding excuses as usual. UNESCO, though, is making some careful progress as their statement on the Mother Language Day two days ago, recommending mother tongue based not lingual education shows. Much is happening in UNESCO's Bangkok office as persons the chapter in the book shows. But even UNESCO's message two days ago is weakened by lack of clear cut definitions. For instance, not always making clear enough the difference between using a language as the main medium of teaching and learning and teaching it as a subject only. As we say in our introduction to the handbook, researchers and legal documents from various areas represented in our multi and transdisciplinary book define many basic concepts in different ways, if they define them at all. Through of concepts such as language, minority, ethnicity, indigenous peoples, tribals, linguistics, linguistic and cultural genocide, and linguistic human rights. As the fate of the Uyghurs in China and the Kurds in Turkey, and we have chapters and both in the book show, we need agreements on how to define central concepts, so that we know what we are talking about. The brain is a case in point. And what I think we need is a completely new independent UN that is able to act, not only talk that that is at all order. Thank you very much to both of you I think I will pass it next to Shivani if you could share with us your reflections about the state of linguistic human rights in the world. Thank you for the opportunity of linguistic human rights and significance of this handbook. Thank you. Thank you so much. The one, the state of linguistic human rights world over as we are observing, you know, far from the language questions getting addressed, we find that between languages, different languages competing to be the new English. You know the hierarchical arrangement of languages never is getting challenged. So in some countries you will see the domination of English over other languages, you come to India for instance you'll find that it's usually the languages of the dominant, that even gets the status as regional languages of the state. So in different ways the hierarchy continues the domination continues. And for me one very important question since we are discussing human rights and you know, lives of people is also that you know who gets to theorize who gets to advance knowledge. And the fact that you know today we are all gathered here and we are like, so we said, forced to speak in the language of the oppressor is because that if I want to ask questions if I want to contribute to theory. I have little recourse outside English. So, you know, for me it's important I mean and the, the entry point for me in this book is how do we reflect at the question of language at higher education, you know, which is where knowledge advancement happens. We also see whether questions, the misrepresentation, the invisibilization of the historically oppressed and the marginalized. In any ways, you know, is find reflection in our new theories to our old theories get challenged. So the question of language and higher education is not an often explored one, but an extremely crucial one. And in context of India, you know you find something very interesting. One is that the school system is highly unequal it's extremely hierarchical. Most schools are actually non English medium, the English medium education is available only to elites in India. So if we see different education reports even off the government. English is used as a medium of education maybe around 12.9% at primary stage at 33% at the higher secondary stage. But when students come to university in India, the medium of instruction is predominantly more than 90% in English. Now these translate into varying kind of difficulties and use of English as a language for now engaging in very complex academic discourse that higher education demands a few. Right. And the consequences on the students vary from failure alienation from classroom dropouts and alarmingly high suicide rates. We have several crime bureau and other reports in past few decades in India, which have highlighted this, you know, a crucial report that was given by a committee that was formed to examine a high spate of suicides among students coming from disadvantage context. The senior institutes of the country actually reported in fact one of the most important findings of this committee was the, that the fact that the institutions are not taking any initiative for remedial coaching in English language. So over the years, you know, even the question of language and higher education has got reduced to, you know, providing some kind of remedial support system, which doesn't really address students questions. It's like, you know, students coming from oppressed castes, indigenous identities linguistic minorities remain marginalized, their questions do not inform questions of research, their questions do not reflect, you know how we are re examining existing theories, not knowing English often excludes them from being selected into research position and doctoral programs as candidates, because what teachers would most likely look at is their ability to be able to write a 500 page document in English. So in those ways, you know, if that doesn't get challenged, the fact is that, you know, concerns around language marginality then remain concerns of few. Academically, I mean, you know, in terms of protest in terms of movements of course they are concerns of people whose lives are getting impacted. But we find very few of their lives getting reflected in academia. And even if it does, you know, it gets done on behalf. We find very few active voices from those contexts themselves. So that I think is a huge problem. And you know, especially those of us who come from any imagination of critical theorization critical research. It's important that people be here, you know, actively owning their voices and raising these questions. So that has been, you know, my entry point. In this book, of course, have engaged with questions of schooling and in the communities where I work in pandemic and in the context of pandemic you know when one saw that how pre domination of certain languages also led to a large scale information to be when it came to sharing, you know, information about what was extremely important at that point of time. So these are important questions that you know we consistently have to be asking. And as we ask, you know, for language rights at the level of, you know, health rights education rights and so on. So the important question is also you know in which languages will knowledge continue to be produced and shared and accessed. So yeah, these are, you know, this is what this has been a concern that I have tried to highlight and I'm sure this is a concern which may ring true for many. So anything on which I would be glad to take questions and interact more on. Thank you. Thanks so much, Giovanni, I will go over to Ahmed now for your reflections on this topic. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Gerald. And I am, I'm very delighted to be here. My, my contribution to the handbook is to fold. I have a chapter in the theory section. Which in response to Shivani that Caliban and his children can also theorize. So I'll do my best to give you a brief outline of what that chapter is about. What are their attempts to offer a critique of the Euro syndrome of mainstream human rights and their fundamental entanglements with colonialism capitalism and global coloniality. It is also an attempt to look into the contemporary political and ideological implication of hegemonic the hegemonic regime of human rights with new liberalism, and particularly the harm that is occasion. Now that we're talking about linguistic human rights the harm that is occasioned by global linguistic coloniality. And this is what the broad framework of my intervention in in the handbook and, and specifically the chapter engages with the new liberal reconfiguration of culture and identity. And particularly in the backdrop of the articulation of cultural and linguistic claims and linguistic human rights. Okay, it also addresses how critiques of linguistic human rights, particularly academic critiques of human of linguistic human rights, paradoxically, indicate new liberal ideologies and and politics. So there. I think it is a truism to say that our age, as as Robert pointed out, our troubled times are also troubled in part because of the ravages of new liberalism in the past four decades across the world. And there's clearly a new liberal capture of the discourse and practice of human rights globally. So not only are human rights. subsidiary to neoliberalism, but they also offer the moral ammunition against neoliberal excessive so they're their purchases practically one of offering a moral universe to counteract the ravages of neoliberalism. Fundamentally, they do operate. What I mean by they is that Eurocentric human rights, they do operate as an ideological veil to neoliberal hegemony so they are in effect a super structural apparatus that normalizes neoliberal accumulation and expansion. I think it's, it's fundamental to understand how contemporary discourses of human rights overlap and intersect with dominant discourses of neoliberalism. And to give you a sense of how this intersects with how we understand language and identity. It's important to recognize that neoliberalism as a dislocated project has also generated a certain dis disjuncture in how we have come to understand our symbolic worlds. And so has become in itself a an apparatus of subjectification. So there are increasingly new reconfigurations of how we perceive ourselves how we perceive culture, how we perceive identity rights and languages in ways that reproduce the fundamental ideological assumptions of neoliberalism. Okay, and in my chapter I talked about new multi new liberal multiculturalism as a mode of state governance of cultural difference of linguistic diversity and how these policies are very much embedded in larger frameworks of, of new liberal, the neoliberal framework. Discourses also around how identities are constantly shifting, how they're in the indeterminate how they're unstable. They also greatly dovetail with dominant discourses of, of new liberalism and how it constructs the subject as a practically not as a subject but as a, but as a project as a portfolio of monetized and mark the marketable assets. The dominant conceptions which of course have their own origins in postmodern theory seem to be completely in cahoots with with with the neoliberal neoliberal project so that was my, at least part of my intervention that chapter. The second part, which will probably broach in the second part of our own of our of the seminar has to do with decolonial human rights and how we need to reconceive linguistic human rights in a new decolonial key in ways that D link with the dominant regime of neoliberalism but also how to dealing from global coloniality. So I stop here Gerald and hopefully we'll deal with that second part in in the in the in the in the upcoming part of our event today. Well, thank you very much and thanks to all the panelists for your comments. If I can just briefly try to summarize the gist of what people were saying I think the, the real importance of this handbook is that in the real world we have this deep need for a kind of theoretical leverage that will enable people around the world to pursue linguistic justice. We need this because we have deepening authoritarianism, we have democratic recession. We have the neoliberal capture of human rights discourses we have the persistent effects of colonialism all around the world. And in this context we, we know that this has profound effects on people's everyday lives all around the world. Despite this within the Academy there has been this drawing back from drawing away from the concept of language rights and linguistic human rights. And many disciplines remains a pariah concept unfortunately, we have this wonderful interdisciplinary field but which includes international law or anthropology political science linguistics educational theorists, and so on and as much as the source of collaboration and solidarity. It's also a source of vulnerability with each of those different disciplines, mounting their own critique of linguistic human rights, just at the moment where it seems to be so important everywhere. So that's I'll use that to segue to the second theme that we're going to talk about is this idea of well why is this topic important in the practical sense in the real world and and in the human lives that people are living and that's where this suggestion comes up that language rights save lives that respecting linguistic human rights that defending linguistic human rights from the ravages of the state and transnational capital and so on. It saves lives whether that is in the immediate sense of prevents people from dying or in a slower longer drawn out sense of creating equity in terms of the quality and quantity of life between people everywhere regardless of whatever language that they speak. So I will hand the microphone over to our panelists to give some reflections on this topic of language rights save lives and we're going to start this time with Shivani. Thank you. Thank you so much. In fact, when we are talking about language rights saving lives. In continuation, you know with what I was trying to say about theorization and you know who really gets access to more nuanced form of knowledge. The concern that I feel is important to highlight is you know in the kind of times we live in today, you know, many. Again, if I cite the context of third world countries like India with many with smartphones and hand and an easy access to say internet. What are the languages in which actually knowledge is getting accessed and what are the languages in which there is a mass misinformation flow. In terms of you know who gets headlines and rhetoric and who has access to what forms the basis of those headlines and rhetoric in terms of you know evidence arguments theories etc. And thinking of this in context of you know the massive spread of fake news misinformation on social media which which is happening today, and which is costing lives in so many ways from encouraging ill advised health decisions to hate crimes. You know we are living in times where people, many in India would, you'll find that, especially with onset of pandemic where it became important to have a smartphone to even be able to access education. If you have access to smartphones there is internet, there is basic literacy and digital literacy, and all kinds of misinformation are being thrust on them, you know from misinformation on health nutrition to economic scenario to you know, misguided statistics on developmental indexes and on each other on communities, right where lies are getting miscladded aspects. This can happen because the ones who are receiving all this misinformation and lies as one liners in their language. Again other ones who really don't have access to knowledge discourse because that the access to that gets gets restricted by such few languages. Right, so I often meet people who would have received something in their own language about some, you know, misrepresented historical fact, which can then become a basis for inducing and encouraging people to lynch one another to engage in hate crimes. These are also people you know who have some basic literacy in a language without having access to real knowledge in their languages, you know, whereby they can verify facts. They can think about the arguments, they can think about the, you know different kind of evidences. We have seen, you know, what, what is happening to the world because of that. Right. If, and hence the, you know, language question in terms of having land, having knowledge advanced and created in multiple and multiple languages. Perhaps address you know this vast asymmetry that we have in terms of who gets the real information and who becomes victim to a mass peddling of lies. You know it might not immediately strike one as a question of language. But the fact is that it becomes easy to distract somebody to misinform somebody, given that you know that with with their home languages being so disconnected from the languages in which academics happen in which histories are written in which medical information is, it makes them very, very easy buyers of misinformation and lies. So, a huge threat to lives is also because this distinction between basic literacy and knowledge, you know has remained and many governments have been okay with accepting the idea of literacy as the idea of education. So, I think that's one troubling thing that one is also finding in times of today that I would want to highlight as to how, you know, questions of language also have different kind of implications than ones that are most easily visible. Great. Thank you so much, Giovanni, we'll go over now to Ahmed for your reflection. Thank you. Yes, I'll offer a set of fragmented theoretical reflections on the question of life. And I think it's important to frame the question in a broader politics of life, rather than, at least from my own perspective rather than a directly practical reflex to how language rights actually save lives. Because I believe that framing the question in that large perspective is important. And my entry point into this is an foregrounding of intersectional liberation. And I think talking of linguistic human rights and the liberatory potential requires that we situate those politics in a much larger frame, in a much larger imperative of intersectional liberation. Namely questions of self determination, cultural autonomy, economic and political sovereignty and global equality. These were and have been at the core of contestatory third world projects and minority and indigenous resistance. So a broader politics of life necessitates that we locate the question of life and linguistic human rights in this vast universe of intersectional liberation. And so, in that respect, and speaking of life, decolonial, at least from my own point of view, decolonial linguistic human rights should be attentive to the enduring necropolitics of linguistic coloniality. I do believe that, in the same way that we live in the colonial scene, we also live in an age of the linguistics. And that again behooves us to grapple with the questions of linguistic necropolitics that are constitutive of global linguistic coloniality. Okay. So, attending to those structures or necro structures of linguistic destruction is essential, but in terms of how global language dominating that domination functions in a variety of context, but also primarily in, in, in the intersection between what might be linguistic necropolitics but also epistemic necropolitics with which I think Shivani has, has, has talked about. And so I think, at least from this point of view, we need to this articulate this question of human rights broadly and also linguistic human rights. And rearticulate them within this large framework of what, what in the chapter I call Vita politics or Vita linguistics it's a linguistic linguistics of life and linguistics of a politics of life and a linguistics of life that that not just attaining weight but completely delink from the ravages of the contemporary neoliberal regime but also the, the, the sort of enduring impacts of global coloniality and particularly linguistic coloniality. Great. Thank you so much. We'll pass over to Tuva and Robert now for the final comments on this section. Thanks. When I think of some of the examples that we have in the experiential evidence part of our last chapter that has a lot about about how language rights may save lives. Likewise, if people have the opportunity to read a general's latest article on necropolitical issues, necro not negro whatever it was in this in in this. What is it called. Whatever. What we can see the examples are there. What I would like to say then is the continuing expropriation of itm's lands and waters itm stands for indigenous tribal minority and minorities. So the continuing continuing expropriation of itm's lands and waters has often led to genocide and ecocide. It has also made and continues to make the exploitation of itm's and minoritized people peoples, as well as local people, a global norm. Interacting the oil at the minerals and so on ruins not only the lands and waters and the air, meaning our planet, but they also ruined people's chances to continue their lives, either where they have lived, and often also elsewhere. And it makes also their knowledges of sustainable living disappear. And this happens every day on most continents, as we know, linguistic expropriation, which we have examples of in book, often also leads to linguistic and cultural genocide, and other crimes against humanity. It is clear in most educational systems in the world, where itm's are involved, even in those where they are excluded from formal education, and several chapters in the book illustrate all this. So what is unusual with this handbook and which I love most in it is not only the incredibly impressive lineup of authors, but also the very different styles of the contributors. Many handbooks provide the authors with a model or blueprint that they are more or less supposed to follow. For instance, a brief, brief history of the research area, an overview of theoretical approaches and key issues, early and later case studies, methodological and problematic issues, new theoretical insights, conclusions with future desiderata. Often authors are asked to depersonalize their chapters. They are supposed to present various approaches and trends objectively, and or not to express their own opinions, to express these opinions is sometimes seen as unscientific. This can sometimes lead to what could be called parliamentary science, present the alternatives objectively and let the reader vote. We have very few examples of this in the book, but then we did not give the authors a blueprint to follow. The only restrictions were on length. The diversity of approaches is, we think, a real strength in the handbook. All authors are deeply involved in the topic, also personally, as we can hear for instance when Shivani speaks. So, several also illustrate the analysis with their own experiences. Some chapters are really tough to read. For instance, Ahmed's. To some extent Gerard's also. Many are in between. A few chapters are like exciting short stories, sometimes sad, sometimes optimistic. Many chapters are in between and most authors are, at the same time, activists in the area, too. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the authors. Your chapters complement each other. They are in no way trying to compete with each other, and you are all just wonderful. But writing and talking is not enough. Paula Freire said, as we remember, we make the road by walking. And even fantastic books like this handbook imply mostly talking. But we all hope that the book might inspire to some more walking to you. Thank you. Okay. It's a hard act to follow after these very inspiring contributions by all the other panelists, but and I also think it's invidious to select chapters that make a unique contribution to the book, because all of the chapters do. But I will comment on three and draw a connection to a fourth. The chapter on Indonesia by Huell Coleman, a Welsh origin and David Fero Indonesian is a painstaking study of how information for the population in Indonesia on coping with the COVID pandemic was not disseminated in languages that were comprehensible for much of the population. This confirms the familiar pattern of the class system favoring the privileged and sacrificing the lives of the poor. And since the medical world knows that new pandemics are bound to emerge probably soon, a language policy that respects linguistic human rights is needed in all countries worldwide one can generalize that from the Indonesian experience. The second example is the chapter on Nepal, which the British called Nepal, written by two influential Nepalese lava day or a wasty who told her and I have known for 30 years since he did his doctorate in Denmark, your gender Prasad Yadava and a Canadian linguistic anthropologist Mark Turin, and all three of these people have extensive experience of working with Nepali communities. The chapter presents the complexity of the Constitution and legislation and court cases, much of which impressively aims to ensure the rights of speakers of all Nepali languages. So let's be right in the afterward to overnight site information from lava who informed us that the Constitution makes no provision for English to play a role in the country. However, the act relating to compulsory and free education grants to English the right to figure as a medium of instruction alongside Nepali and other tongues. This lava to conclude and as you can see from the notes on contributors in the book. He's exceptionally well informed English will progressively and I quote from lava, eat up the Nepali language as well as all other mother tongues of Nepal, which lack the power and resources to compete with English. And they've written about this. And after which tov and I add in our afterwards some of these resources are international aid efforts that preponderantly serve to strengthen the learning of English and not Nepali languages. And this is a familiar form of educational and linguistic imperialism that suppresses the linguistic human rights of national languages. I would predict that this means that if more and more less privileged Nepali people are having education through the medium of English their education will be a failure it will not giving them better chances in life. And we also state in the afternoon that the governments of the United States and the UK, citing the Kenyan scholar Missouri, and of Australia shiting Jackie with it within. All of them are guilty of strengthening English at the expense of other languages, which is what the World Bank has done for decades although it might be getting a slightly more differentiated position now. But what happens when market forces are given free reign, which is what the Nepalese are arguing against. And then the third chapter I will talk briefly about is my own chapter on global English, which pleads for conceptual clarity when analyzing the diverse functions of English as an international language. And this is key factors that accounts for its expansion, and how the European Union's management of multilingualism can maintain the vitality of all 24 official and working languages, even when English is privileged for some functions and in and French for others. Significantly and very much tying in with what Ahmed has been talking about my chapter also shows how privatization of public education in Sweden, generally involving an increased use of English strengthens global corporate interests, venture capital, libertarian interests, and banks. English is playing a constructive role quite unlike that in international efforts to support Ukraine, militarily and politically, but NATO is being strengthened thanks to Putin with English as the primary language. And this means that the US military industrial complex benefits, as does the geopolitical aims of the Anglo sphere, the efforts of the dominant English speaking countries to perpetuate global, essentially American domination. There are many complex issues on which a lot has been written but all my examples serve to underline the decisive importance that there should be explicit language policies, and that linguistic human rights issues should be addressed rather than since they are in fact of existential importance for life of languages for both national languages and for national minority languages. And this is also demonstrated in the chapter on Ukraine in a very convincing way. And that all of that is why the handbook is well over 700 pages all of which needs careful study and I'll stop there thank you. Thank you Robert and thanks again to all the panelists for your reflections there. We've come in just on the hour now which is wonderful we'll have about half an hour for conversation and questions. I might just ask Joey, since we had several people, quite a few people join us since the introduction. If you could maybe just remind us how the questions will work, what people should do if they have a question and then we can go to the audience. Over to you, Joey. Great, thanks. First, I'll just remind you that we're recording. If you want to participate in the question and answer you have a couple options here you can put your question in the chat if you wanted to write it out. There's also a Q&A icon in your zoom where you can put a question in there and I can read those out for you, or you can use the raise hand function. And I already have one hand raised actually so Gerald do you mind if I just go to that first hand. I'm going to go ahead and allow you to speak if you want to ask your question. You may have to press the unmute button. Meanwhile, other people can feel free to raise their hands or put their questions down. Okay, so you might not be there to ask the question so Gerald if you want to get us started with the question and we'll give everyone else a chance to put their questions in. The question come up in the chat so I'll put that to the panel and whoever would like to answer it first is welcome to so we have a question about what do you think about sign languages as minority and minoritized languages. Would anyone care to answer that question for us. I want to say something about that. We have two chapters in the book about sign languages. One is by one is by people from from Gallaudet University in Washington DC, which is the only university that functions, mainly through the medium of sign language. That is, unfortunately, the American sign language. There is another chapter by three high level people from the World Federation of the deaf. And what is important with them is that they can, they can use both legal protection that comes from seeing them as a disabled group, and legal protection that comes from them as the linguistic minority, minoritized group. And, of course, the one of the books called deaf gain shows very clearly that there are very many advantages that deaf people have that we who are not deaf don't have, for instance, they can see much, much more than we do. But most people who talk about languages and even language rights linguistic human rights do not seem to take into consideration the deaf and there's a lot there to learn. Thank you. Would anyone else like to add some more perspectives on that question. Do we have any other questions from the audience. I might put a question to everyone while we're waiting we we have a question. Here we are in the Q&A. So I'll put that to you and I'll hold off my question. A recurring theme in all of today's presentations has been the role of neoliberalism in first perpetuating linguicide and second co-opting linguistic human rights almost as an aesthetic. Is it possible to combat linguicide on the ground without working to dismantle the socio economic foundations of neoliberalism. Thank you for that question. Would anyone like to weigh into that. I feel like Ahmed this is your question. Shivani your hand has gone up. Well, is it possible to combat linguicide on the ground without working to dismantle the foundations of neoliberalism. No, it isn't. That's what I would very strongly believe. And also, you know, because if we see, you know what Robert also shared earlier, and which is the argument to win Robert I've been making several papers of this. The privatization of public education, you know, is also largely happening in English. You can see who's controlling someplace today, right, and that controlling of knowledge is not just to, you know, legitimate, legitimize different forms of power, but largely the interests of the global capital. So in India you see a shift where, you know, this privatization of education is also parallely accompanied by a shift towards skills. So not so much as social sciences not to engage so much in theory and research, but you know how to have skilled labor for the corporates. Right. So one, you know, the power of certain languages is to actually deny people. And I wish that they need to be able to resist to realize that something which is happening is not the way it should be. Right. And co-option, you know, co-option, even if we see how co-option is happening. Like you said, it's, you know, it's very, it's an aesthetic level of co-option, which means the co-option. You can see that languages in context of India getting maybe included to primary levels at most still middle school levels. The co-option will not really allow it to grow more. So, you know, the co-option is also extremely limited, extremely defined and restrictive, so to say. So I don't see how, you know, that to linguicide on the ground can happen without dismantling the socio-economic foundations of neoliberalism. Thank you for that, Shivani. I would also add that there is a subjectifying element to neoliberalism that's important to take into account. So in addition to the economic infrastructure of neoliberalism, the privatization and the rest, neoliberalism also functions as a, as an ideological apparatus. And we've seen increasingly language policies being embedded within global economic discourses of human capital. So the idea that human beings are an assemblage of skills that can be monetized and that human beings themselves are capital and they are constituted by this capital that they can invest. This is not only an attempt by the neoliberals to refute Marxist labor theory of value, but this is a total reconstitution of the subject of what it means to be human. And so one front with regard to de-linking from neoliberalism is not just to de-link from the socio-economic and so primarily the economic structure of neoliberalism, but also to de-link from its own ideological universe. This idea that human beings are fundamentally entrepreneurs of themselves. There are also forms of neoliberal language policies, even forms of multilingualism that are decidedly neoliberal, which create a hierarchy of linguistic value based on divisions like languages of the knowledge economy, languages of human capital, languages of economic development and languages of identity, languages of authenticity, and so on and so forth. And in most cases, these policies that are centered on a neoliberal recasting of multilingualism also dovetail with cultural policies that are also centered on a neoliberal management of cultural difference. So in addition to the infrastructural economic foundation of neoliberalism, there is an equally insidious ideological project that one has to attend to and de-link from in order to create truly liberatory language policies. I can go on, but I think at least this is what I can say, speak into that question directly. Can I say something? I think in many ways Torva was talking about linguistic human rights and nobody was listening 50 years ago, whereas now the very fact that we have drawn on indigenous experience so much in the book means that there are powerful forces which are liberator in Ahmed sense, and in fact the book consolidates and the very fact that this dreadful American publisher who has produced the book, we had horrible fierce battles with them to get them to behave better in relation to authors, is in some way showing that these struggles are existential and are succeeding in a very modest way in all sorts of different contexts. But as both Shivani and Ahmed was saying, and Torva mentioned Nancy Fraser's new book Cannibal Capitalism, it ties in with issues of race, gender, ethnicity, class, and language tends to be ignored by many scholars including Nancy Fraser, but it should be there as well and that's exactly where the liberatory forces that we hope are empowering the whole book can in some way be used in order to try to create more local justice and ideally greater justice in wider context. Thank you for that we have the questions are coming in, they can fast now I will just I just want to add my own comment to this. How do we seek linguistic justice by dismantling or opposing neoliberalism, I think the concept of rights are really important here for reasons that both Ahmed and Shivani were talking about, which have to do with the profound deep politicizing of every aspect of life within neoliberalism the idea that everything, every problem can be solved by individual effort, individual upskilling and allowing the market to carry your product up to the level where it belongs. The way that human rights activism is carried out in other fields serves as a useful model here for languages which is that we in relation to language we need to repoliticize these issues and we can do this by adopting the shame and blame model that so many human rights activists have successfully used we can, we can point out who is the oppressor we can put their name on the internet we can show what they've done we can generate the outrage which is necessary to fuel political action. I think in terms of, I think it's completely necessary to have an assault on neoliberalism in order to ensure linguistic justice centering rights and using the mechanisms and the tactics of human rights activism is really important within that. I will go to the next question that I just want to, I just want to interject very quickly, Gerald. If I can say another dead white man, Bordieu, Pierre Bordieu pointed out that the worst form of politics is a politics that denies its own politics. So this interestedness in his own words is the most interested form of politics. And so in that very sense neoliberalism by claiming to be the D or a political is the most political of all ideologies is the most interested of all ideologies. So I just wanted to make that point. Thank you. Thank you. I'll go to the next question we have in the q&a which I'll read out how can we introduce linguistic justice and inclusion when most of the political and economic systems with all its institutions like education. Now the same systems that were introduced and designed using colonizer frames to subjugate indigenous people. For example, denial of linguistic identities monolingualism unequal access to resources, etc. The former colonizers may have left, but the new imperialists, the various centers or dominant populations are still working within these imperialist structures and parameters. So I'll leave that question open to whoever unmoots themselves first. I can try and see one thing is, you know, when we think about the systems I mean in case of India. The fact is that, you know, it was the system of education in India was brought in by our colonial rulers with an aim that you know they would have a class, which would serve its interest and will help strengthen its rule. But, you know, the thing with knowledge is, or with education systems is that even as they are designed to maintain certain status quo to reproduce, you know, the past structures that exist. The possibility of creation there makes them also systems of hope. Right. And that is why you see that a colonial education system. That was envisaged as something that would strengthen the colonial rule in India actually gave rise to a lot of protesters rebels who ultimately turned, you know this, who turned the tide against the colonial rulers. Most of them, you know, most of the freedom fighters were active recipients of this kind of an education system. So we introduce it by creating different kind of lectures. A lot of us, I believe, are also writing in different languages. You know, my over the years I would have, I've worked an instance in trying to make sure that English is not the only language that I'm curating or writing in the kind of, you know, interactions conversations that we make possible in these systems, because the fact is, you know, irrespective of what these systems may have been designed to people across oppressed contexts have also come into these systems and used them to voice their questions and challenges. So that hope remains, can we, you know, as possible in this platform, can we bring together these voices. Can we have more conversations. What kind of pedagogy. Do we imagine if I'm talking in terms of educational institutions I mean they are not the only institutions. What kind of you know even how do we look at language itself I mean in today's Indian classrooms, the English has become very Indian English. The way it is being used so also what are we doing with the languages that are forced down on us and using them to actively, you know resist. So I do see that possibility. I mean the systems may not dictate us we enter them and then we do something with them we challenge them. We sometimes reform them we sometimes destroy and create something new. So, I mean, that's the project that we have to be collectively thinking about with anyone else like to jump in with an answer to this question. I think the same is much the case in in in former African colonies as well. As you are saying. I can only. And also clearly indigenous peoples worldwide are infinitely more active now than they were 2030 years ago so I mean there are all sorts of ways in which the system is being challenged, relatively successfully. So in Latin America, so called Latin America, where there are many educators who think that that formal education, as they have inherited it from the colonizers is something that is extremely dangerous. And they would like to check out all those ideologies which are prevalent in today's formal education, even in the kind of education that is supposedly organized by indeed some indigenous groups themselves. So teachers are the new missionaries. Okay, I'll just, in terms of the remaining time that we have we have about 10 more minutes we have a few questions in the Q&A and one in the webinar so I'll just go to the next question that came up in the Q&A which is about Malawi then I'll go into the chat and we have a question about the English hegemony. And then the last question in the Q&A is specifically directed to Shivani. Hopefully we can get through all of those in 10 minutes but I appreciate everyone's enthusiasm that you have so many questions. So can I just say something, speaking to the question, the previous question. The question is, can these colonial institutions save us, and then the other the colorary to that is, can we save ourselves without institutions. And so the question then becomes what kind of, what kinds of institutions do we establish in order to subvert the colonial dark side of institutions like modern education, that we can also conscript for our own liberation. And so I find myself in agreement here with Harney and Moten that universities and education institutions can be a refuge for those who have nowhere else to inhabit. The only thing we can do is that we can steal things from them. And I think that's one way of framing how we can subvert those institutions to our own ends. Is that in the same way that they have cannibalized us we can also cannibalize them for our own purposes. Thank you, Ahmed. So the last three questions are really going to get to the, the heart of the issue in practical terms we have this question about the situation in Malawi so as a case study in Malawi we have over 14 endogenous languages. Information is principally accessible in only one endogenous language to the exclusion of the others, drawing from the views of the participants. How can we empower the other speakers of the minority languages so that they access pertinent information in their languages in order to achieve linguistic human rights. Of course this is the million dollar question, not just in Malawi but everywhere. I would like to give us the same answer is welcome to you. You, you could go to some of the webinars of the Bangkok UNESCO setup. After reading, for instance, Joe Lobbianco's article about Myanmar and Kirk Persons article about about the Bangkok UNESCO, you would have several practical ways of seeing how it can be done. In countries where there are hundreds and hundreds of languages. Yeah, and I think also that that's where what UNESCO is doing in Asia is trying to ensure that there is constructive dialogue between grassroots people and academics and political decision makers. And there is very clear evidence that this is succeeding in promoting mother tongue waste multilingual education, even in very diverse contexts. And there are ways and means of achieving that. And that's exactly what Joe Lobbianco was trying to achieve in in Myanmar with diversity management in order to create peace conditions. Clearly of course then the military intervened and wrecked all of those efforts but it doesn't alter the fact that clearly the more critical scholarship can engage with decision makers. The more chances that some of the ideas that we're talking about today have some chance of being achieved. It's a very long haul as Shivani knows from India. For instance, Ajit Mahante's article about Odia tells how they have partially succeeded and Shivani has worked in that project for quite some time. Thank you both I will just throw in my own answer very quickly to that which is that I think the first step in any situation like this has to be to denaturalize and politicize the problem. I've shown that there is an issue that it is political that it is not the natural state of affairs and often that foundational political work will set the direction for where things go from from there. This vast library of techniques and technologies and positive examples to follow. But without that that foundation of realizing that there is a problem that's created by someone and that can be solved. I think it's hard to put any of those solutions into work. I'll go to the next question in the in the chat. So it says my question is, how do you think we can escape the oppressive hegemony of dominant regional and global languages like English. Considering that such lingua francas have historically existed to unite people and to make common endeavors possible, such as academia, etc. Related to that how should we facilitate the creation of academic or theoretical infrastructure in minorities languages. I think they should. The questioner should read the article on what's happening with the army in the Scandinavian countries and Finland. And it's true that English is expanding in use. But the governments of the Scandinavian countries and Finland have a policy, which is intended to create a balance between the dominant national languages and English, meaning the expansion of English should not be the expense of Swedish Danish finish and so on. It's a policy that all higher education institutions are supposed to be implementing and creating some kind of bilingual academic competence. But it's also the case that within Sami issues, meaning the indigenous minority in the far north of Sweden, Finland, and mainly Norway are not a minority they are indigenous peoples. Thank you. And, and there is very successful evidence that by small steps. Greater recognition, I mean you can go to kindergarten through school up to university level with this indigenous peoples language, tell me, in Norway, so that in all sorts of ways. The the hegemony of English can be counteracted at the national level. And then at the local level you can also ensure greater chance for indigenous languages anywhere in the world to achieve what local people want there, and that is not at the expense of national languages. Ullahendrik Maga, who is emeritus professor of the Sami language and an active reindeer herd and has an article chapter in the book describes how they are trying to do that have been trying to do this within the United Nations Permanent on indigenous issues. And when one, when one attends their yearly two week meetings, one can hear a lot about what people in various parts of the world are doing exactly about this. Ullahendrik chapter first. Thank you both. Let's go to the last question now which is directed at Giovanni so if you also want to answer the previous question you can combine them so the question for Giovanni is you made a very important distinction between literacy versus knowledge. In a very important global scenario governments will not be interested in giving access to knowledge in minoritized languages. What way forward do you suggest for the speakers of these languages. Governments would never be interested in giving any kind of knowledge that encourages anybody to challenge what they're doing right so it's not just in minoritized languages. But what we have seen in India and what is also reflected in the new education policy here is that you know demands and resistances on ground. Do have an impact to do create pressures on governments right so in our new education policy despite its limitations. There is a case which is being made for multilingual higher education space for inclusion of more languages. Of course that comes with certain caveats attached as to you know in India there are many many languages. So which those languages would be would it be regional languages at the cost of say tribal languages and other languages, which forms of languages so those questions are one thing is that movements on ground, you know, resistance by people do create pressures on governments also I mean they cannot function, you know, completely ignoring those pressures. Also, what, you know, another important aspect is responding all responding also to the previous question you know some languages, of course do unite us by becoming the lingua franca and one can acknowledge them without letting them become the exclusive language for knowledge access and or for any other access. So for example, in India. The fact that we had a three language formula whereas in school, you know they use the there was to be education started in child's home language or mother tongue and national language and a third language. The idea was more lingua franca's would be created what why the idea did not function well was that, unlike the southern Indian states which followed the three language formula far more honestly and sincerely. The northern states did not right so the other languages that they opted to learn were either foreign languages or Sanskrit, and hence you know more languages could not get added to the lingua franca. So that possibility was also that was always there. And another thing which you know here it becomes important is that again in a cat in academics. Many of us will also have to take responsibility of writing in more and more languages or translating works where they exist. Because a lot of times what I seen educational institutions are reason to exclude languages because there is no literature in them. Now, if it becomes a kind of a vicious cycle right because there's nothing written in them I can't use them. And if I'm not using them. How does language grow and evolve. That process I think if we start writing I mean, there are any some initiatives being made one. Another red flag is that in India you know a lot of translation initiatives and writing support initiatives are being headed in private universities, which also have a certain kind of composition. So this becomes their way of charging high feed from some and making this little allowance for, you know, a small disadvantage section that we would give them some translated text or writing support. So of course you know this a lot of movement for public education needs to be there. Because resistance on ground does become difficult sometimes for governments to ignore so that the pressure has to be bottom up top down boots. If I can articulate it that way. Thank you Shivani and I'm going to take this opportunity now to wrap up the seminar I just like to thank everyone who can I can I just say one. Thank you enormously to Gerald and Joey for organizing this, and also a reminder that the, that the book has 62 contributors. So there's a wealth of things there which we haven't touched on at all today. But thanks enormously for what you've done to make today possible. Sorry to interact. No that's fine. I wanted to end the talk with a brief with a message of hope I guess we've focused a lot on the challenges and the complexities and the darkness of the times that we live in and there's good reasons for all of those things as well but what I think all of the chapters in this handbook, and as Robert pointed out, there's no shortage of chapters in the book. And they all point out in different ways in different situations that they're that there are real and substantial reasons for hope wherever we are that linguistic justice is possible that linguistic human rights as a political strategy is effective, and it will continue to be effective in the future, whatever that may bring and the more of us who are contributing to this conversation. The more successful will be in that so I would just like to end I guess on the note of solidarity with everyone here with all of the people in the audience and whoever's come along to listen to the recording afterwards. And so solidarity with all of you in your struggles wherever you may be. And yeah, that's all for me Joey I guess I'll let you close out the evening for us. Just reiterate thanks to Gerald Robert to the Acme and Giovanni for taking the time to talk about your work share it explain it and take questions and discussion. Thank you to all the attendees who came here hopefully this was not only an informative talk. It was inspiring to to walk the road of linguistic justice as well. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Gerald. Thank you everybody.