Politica linguistica, democrazia e plurilinguismo: quali prospettive?

From the point of view of political philosophy, the relationship between literacy and democracy appears quite problematic, if the issue of linguistic diversity is set aside. The debate between equalitarian liberals and multiculturalists emerging with the rise of multiculturalism as a theoretical paradigm has highlighted that the historical affirmation of the Western nation-state has been built upon the negation of internal linguistic diversity, favoring some languages over others, a trend which has not lost its strength with the advent of democracy. However, one of the main results of such debate, largely indebted to the Rawlsian conception of justice, has been seemingly the idea that the extended promotion of plurilingualism (that is, a kind of promotion which does not aim to support second or third language acquisition only for the benefit of the so called 'minority' or 'disadvantaged' groups and languages) could not be a viable alternative for contemporary democratic theory to ameliorate its performance. Drawing upon the field of language policy, this article envisages showing that such a result is tied to a certain number of theoretical assumptions concerning language, which are controversial both in political philosophy and in linguistic theory. In the final section, the article tries to provide some suggestions to develop a reflection more open towards the extended promotion of plurilingualism and to acknowledge the human ability to learn more than one linguistic code.

从政治哲学视角观之，若暂且搁置语言多样性议题，识字率与民主之间的关系似乎颇具争议。随着多元文化主义（multiculturalism）作为一种理论范式兴起，平等主义自由主义者与多元文化主义者之间的论争凸显出：西方民族国家的历史建构实则建立在对内部语言多样性的否定之上，优先扶持部分语言，这一趋势并未随民主的到来而有所弱化。然而，这场论争的核心结论之一——其在很大程度上借鉴了罗尔斯式正义观（Rawlsian conception of justice）——似乎指向这样一种观点：大力推广多语制（plurilingualism，即这种推广并非仅为服务于所谓“少数群体”或“弱势群体”及其语言的利益，而开展第二、第三语言习得扶持），并非当代民主理论改善其运行效果的可行替代方案。本文依托语言政策领域的研究框架，试图论证上述结论与一系列关于语言的理论假设紧密相关，而这些假设在政治哲学与语言学理论中均颇具争议。在文末部分，本文尝试提出若干建议，以期推动学界对大力推广多语制展开更为开放的反思，并承认人类具备掌握多种语言代码的能力。