Is minority language use a right or a privilege?

Abstract

Abstract This paper demonstrates how European institutions bend to the idea of the mono-ethnic and monolingual nation-state. Instead of encouraging the use of minority languages and accepting them as a value, minority languages are treated as a tolerated but voluntarily assumed handicap. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of other types of protected identities, such as religion, gender and sexual orientation. Against this background, there is a desperate need for clear value-setting by the European institutions and for a clear message that language shaming is not a venial sin of the monolingual nation-state but a no-go zone even for populists. For this, however, language chauvinism should not be condoned but condemned.