The linguistic boundary problem

ABSTRACT

The boundary problem in political theory concerns the question of the constitution of the demos, and the principle(s) and/or mechanism(s) that may be permissibly used for its demarcation. But what are the linguistic terms in which such demarcation acts should take place? I contend that the boundary problem is nested within a linguistic boundary problem, and that a normative consideration on the constitution of the demos cannot avoid the need to address the question of its linguistic constitution, particularly on the part of ‘talk-centric’ deliberative approaches to democratic citizenship and inclusion. I argue that conceptualising the demos in pre-linguistic, non-linguistic or otherwise linguistically-unaware terms has substantive and adverse implications for its legitimacy claims. I conclude the interrogation of the boundary problem and its linguistic variant by proposing a shift from an abstracted notion of communicative rationality, towards a more situated communicative linguistic and political culture, grounded in linguistic epistemic humility.

KEYWORDS:

• The boundary problem
• democratic theory
• deliberative democracy
• linguistic justice
• everyday citizenship

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Lior Erez, Caroline Bem, Catherine R. Power, the Special Issue editors Eeva Puumala and Reiko Shindo, and Angharad Closs Stephens and Anitta Kynsilehto for their helpful comments and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. On the depoliticization arising from prioritizing the institutional over the relational, see Van Asseldonk 2021.

2. Per Bauböck: ‘all affected interests (AAI)’ (Bauböck 2018, 6)

3. Per Bauböck: ‘all subject to coercion (ASC)’ (Bauböck 2018, 6).

4. See Schmidt 2015; Carey 2020. For a more general consideration on the inextricable link between the conversation and its terms, and the implications for cooperative linguistic justice, see Peled 2018a, 181–183.

5. The multiplicity of linguistic boundaries problems mirrors a similar feature of the boundary problem itself (e.g. Arrhenius 2005, n2).

6. On the role of accent in a democratic soundscape, including in deliberative settings, see Peled and Bonotti 2019.

7. Emery (2009) offers an illuminating account of an inclusive theory and practice of citizenship in relation to Deaf citizens.

8. On the theory and practice of citizenship revocation and denationalization, see a recent special issue of Citizenship Studies ‘When States Take Rights Back: Citizenship Revocation and Its Discontents’ (2019, vol. 23[4]), also published in book form as Fargues, Winter, and Gibney (2020).

9. Printschitz highlights the ‘arbitrary nature of language requirements and criteria: the levels demanded to pass such tests differ from country to country’ (Printschitz 2017, 242). That arbitrariness could be said to further extend beyond the institutional setting, into the civic sphere, where new speakers are faced with an aggregated range of arbitrary judgements on the part of members of the host society on the presumed level of their integration success. This is further compounded by the fact that ‘[f]or adults, there is no simple answer to the question of just how much language is necessary to be integrated, because circumstances of life, of professional success, of family situations, etc., are too complex and diverse’ (Krumm 2012, 45).

10. For a comprehensive case-based analysis of the political ethics of status, acquisition and corpus planning, see Oakes and Peled 2018.

11. See Milani et al. (in this issue) for an account of a civic orientation class for adult migrants in Sweden as a habitus-acquisition mechanism promoting an expansive notion of civic identity, encompassing, alongside core political ethics (e.g. toleration and gender equality), distinct nutritional and environmental doctrines.

12. The matter of the emotional and cognitive inequities that arise from unequal linguistic power relations in democratic societies is where my account here departs substantively from more procedural theories of linguistic justice e.g. Patten (2016).

13. For a critical linguistic examination of Rawls, see Peled and Bonotti (2016). Habermas’ extensive consideration of social complexity, as Strahi notes, ‘did not feed this analysis back into his original concept [of communicative rationality]. He proposed a distinction between informal/weaker and formal/stronger publics […] but still, this solution addressed the issue of differentiation in the structure of the public sphere but not in communication’ (Strani 2014, 33).

14. Peled 2018b, 363.

15. A helpful contribution to that important discussion – from outside professional political theory and philosophy – is Gazzola, Wickström, and Fettes’ (2020, 14) inclusion of the healthcare domain in their work on linguistic justice indices.

16. On the implications of communicative disappointments for democratic faith in linguistically diverse settings, see Peled (2021).

17. Interrogating the standard and the perceptions attached to it in discourses of citizenship, Paz (2019) characterizes it as ‘a voice from nowhere buttressed by a language ideology of social anonymity’. A critical account of its social and political history, he continues, can ‘show how modern public spheres are constituted with the very tension of register – at times enforced by the state – is supposed to make possible public deliberation for all citizens, and yet this project constantly abuts against the differences that subjects bring with them when they address each other in public’ (ibid.).

18. A similar argument highlighting the depoliticized nature of an identity-blind liberal approach to conceptualizing agency in the demos is succinctly advanced by Van Asseldonk (2021, 12).

19. See also Peled and Bonotti’s (2016, 809–810) notion of ‘political extelligence’ for exploring pooled intelligence specifically with regard to cross-linguistic political vocabulary.