Normative Language Policy

Leigh Oakes is Reader in French and Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on language policy and planning, language and national identity, and language attitudes and ideologies, especially in the contexts of Quebec, France and Sweden. Yael Peled is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Language and Health at the Institute for Health and Social Policy and Faculty of Law at McGill University, Canada. Her research interests focus on the moral and political philosophy of language and the phenomenon of interdisciplinarity in academic research.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Language policy and planning in Quebec: a brief overview; 3. In defence of the vernacular: French in the age of global English; 4. Linguistic citizenship: identity, integration and interculturalism; 5. Pluricentric linguistic justice in Quebec: beyond the monocentric ideology; 6. Normative language policy in a complex world.

'Leigh Oakes and Yael Peled have written a book that changes the academic terrain in the field of language policy and planning. Their analysis of the history of language politics in Quebec is incisive and even-handed, revealing all of the complexities and elements that must be considered by political theorists who too often operate from abstract principles and universals at the expense of the role and effects of history and politics 'on the ground'. This book is ambitious in its aims and it delivers what it promises; it is required reading for anyone who wishes to better understand what is at stake when controversies involving language(s) arise in liberal democracies, and how we can better evaluate the risks and benefits of different approaches to dealing with those controversies.' Thomas Ricento, University of Calgary