Linguistic Justice and Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

This paper investigates whether analytic philosophers who are non-native English speakers are subject to linguistic injustice and, if yes, what kind of injustice that is and whether it is different from the general disadvantage that non-native English speakers meet in a world where English is rapidly becoming the lingua franca. The paper begins with a critical review of the debate on linguistic justice, with a particular focus on the emergence of a lingua franca and the related questions of justice, both in terms of the disadvantages suffered by those groups who bear the cost of learning another language and in terms of forms of discrimination due to accents and language improprieties. We argue that being at a relative disadvantage compared to others does not necessarily translate in a proper injustice if fundamental civil, political and social provisions are in place. We suggest that a circumstance of injustice arises when such disadvantage affects those who are not yet members of such academic community such as prospective students, thus contributing in keeping the non-native group a minority. We qualify this case of disadvantage as a matter of structural injustice.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the University of Eastern Piedmont.

Notes

1 Among social psychologists there is some controversy over the literature on implicit bias, especially on the Implicit Association Test (IAT). On the degree to which IAT can be considered as a predictor of actual discriminatory behaviour see Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji (2003); Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, and Banaji (2009); Nosek, Greenwald, and Banaji (2005); Lane, Kang, and Banaji (2007); Oswald et al. (2015). We do not explore this methodological debate here. However, IAT is just one amongst a number of implicit measures which attempt to grasp individuals’ implicit associations and many studies such as those recalled in the text do not rely on such test.

2 Principles of justice can be both comparative and non-comparative. ‘Sufficiency’ principles are those non-comparative principles which hold that ‘what justice requires is that each person should have “enough”, on some dimension or other—for instance, have all of their needs fulfilled, or have a specified set of capabilities that they are able to exercise’ (Miller 2017).