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Shallow Equality and Symbolic Jurisprudence in Multilingual Legal Orders
OXFORD STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LAW
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Shallow Equality and Symbolic Jurisprudence in Multilingual Legal Orders
Janny H. C. Leung
Shallow Equality and Symbolic Jurisprudence in Multilingual Legal Orders
Janny H. C. Leung
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leung, Janny H. C., author.
Title: Shallow equality and symbolic jurisprudence in multilingual legal orders / Janny H. C. Leung.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Series: Oxford studies in language and law | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018031469 (print) | LCCN 2018041224 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190210342 (updf) | ISBN 9780190210359 (online content) | ISBN 9780190930608 (epub) | ISBN 9780190210335 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Linguistic rights. | Multilingualism. | Linguistic minorities—Legal status, laws, etc. | Law—Language. | Discrimination in language. | Language policy. | BISAC: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics. | LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative.
Classification: LCC K3259 (ebook) | LCC K3259 .L48 2019 (print) | DDC 340/.14—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031469
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For the struggle against disciplinary boundaries.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Synopsis xi
Introduction: Language and Law in the Whirlpool of Politics 1
Making Sense of Multilingual Legal Orders 4
A Search for Meaning at a Multidisciplinary Crossroads 8
PART I Causes
1. Tracing Linguistic Management through Time: Law as a Lens 17
Functional Multilingualism in Medieval Class Society 18
Colonial Diglossia in European Imperialism 22
Linguistic Nationalism and the Birth of Monolingual Modern States 26
Linguistic Rivalry during Decolonization 31
Parallel Multilingualism in International Legal Order 33
Characterizing Contemporary Legal Multilingualism 35
2. Mapping a Global Phenomenon: The Spectacle of Official Multilingualism 39
Some Precursors 40
Inclusion Criteria 41
Contestable Issues 43
Bilingual and Multilingual Sovereign States 49
Bilingual and Multilingual Non-State Jurisdictions 69
Jurisdictions with De Facto Bilingual or Multilingual Law 77
Observations 78
3. How Official Multilingualism Works: A Symbolic Jurisprudence 87
The Legal and Political Meaning of Status Labels 88
Official Rhetoric 91
The Excluded Others 93
The Symbolic Jurisprudence of Official Language Law 96
Identity Formation and Norm Creation 116
4. Institutionalizing Multilingualism: Watchdogs on a Leash and the Bureaucratic Trap 123
Negotiating the Legal Meaning of Language Status 123
Mechanisms for Implementation and Their Limitations 130
Resource Constraints 141
Reality Check: Status Quo, Undisrupted 150
5. Creating Multilingual Legal Texts: Domination and Dependence 157
Challenges in Legal Translation 158
Reinventing Legal Drafting: Translation and Beyond 167
Constructing and Developing a Legal Language 171
From Linguistic to Ideological Engineering 172
The Impossibility of Textual Equality 180
6. Interpreting Multilingual Legislation: The Limits of Language and the Certainty of Uncertainty 183
Multiple Expressions, One Law? 183
To Be Equal or Not to Be Equal 185
Equal Authenticity 187
Textual Equivalence as Legal Fiction 190
Legislative History and Implicit Preference 192
A Teleological Approach to Legal Interpretation 194
Routine Comparison and Textual Interdependency 197
The European Union as a Radical Example 199
Rethinking Legal Interpretation 204
7. Conferring Official Language Rights in Legal Communication: Access to Justice and Conflict of Laws 209
The Notion of Language Rights 210
Official Language Rights in Multilingual Courtrooms 213
The Language Criterion in Jury Selection 233
Unrepresented Litigants 243
Paradox of Language Rights 246
8. Concluding Remarks on Linguistic Equality, Strategic Pluralism, and Linguistic Justice 249
Inherent Dilemmas about Upholding Linguistic Equality 250
The Shallow Character of Linguistic Equality 254
The Linguistic Justice Debate 259
Pluralism as a Strategy 262
A Tale of Caution and Opportunity 264
Bibliography 267
Index 295
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist if my colleague Christopher Hutton did not infect me with the idea that studying law is “fun.” Two post-doctoral degrees later, my exploration in language and law continues. His thirst for knowledge, characteristic humility, caring for humanity, and endless patience have been a constant source of inspiration.
I am indebted to Alan Durant, a long-term collaborator whom I have learnt a great deal from. I have not met a more conscientious academic and a more detail-minded thinker, writer, and reader.
I am also grateful to Janet Ainsworth, Lawrence Solan, Peter Goodrich, and William Alford for their unfailing support, continuous encouragement, and professional guidance at different stages of my intellectual pursuit.
The manuscript has benefited from my discussions with Daniel Markovits and Michael Reisman from Yale Law School; constructive feedback I have received from Brook Bolander, Christopher Hutton, and other colleagues from the School of English and Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong; as well as editorial support from Hallie Stebbins and Hannah Doyle at Oxford University Press.
My gratitude extends to Jennifer Allison (librarian from the Harvard Law School Library), and my research assistants Brian Chan, Zena Prodromou, Patrick Jiang, and Matthew Yeung.
The time and resources required for the undertaking of this project were made possible by the generous support from a Hong Kong government grant (HKU 747812H of General Research Fund), a visiting scholarship from the Harvard Yenching Institute in 2013–2014, and a Universitas 21 fellowship that supported my stay at McGill Law School during the revision period of the book.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, Leung Yung Fuk and Ng Man Yin, for their love and trust through the years, and Joseph Yang for always challenging me to think deeper and harder.
SYNOPSIS
Given that one can find linguistic diversity in any society, why have some states, but not others, decided to give official recognition to multiple languages? How has official multilingualism mushroomed, both nationally and internationally? What legal meaning is attached to such terms as official language and national language, and what consequences follow from such designations? Is linguistic equality an unqualified social good? To answer these questions, the two parts of this book respectively dissect the sociopolitical and ideological forces that create official multilingualism, and evaluate how official multilingualism affects public institutions and legal processes. There are apparent strong tides against official multilingualism. Underlying the formation of modern states is the Romantic notion of nationalism, which calls for people who share the same cultural roots and speak the same language to come together and form a political unit. Linguistic nationalism idealizes linguistic homogeneity, which has been seen as vital to both democratic and economic development, for it is presumed to facilitate the creation of a shared public discourse and to enhance efficiency and productivity. Throughout most of modern history, minority communities have been expected to assimilate through learning and speaking the national language, which has a superior status over other languages. The rise of bilingual and multilingual polities raises the questions of whether this norm has been challenged, and whether there has been a shift in popular ideology in relation to language and sovereignty. Does the transition from linguistic supremacy toward linguistic equality mark the triumph of liberal multiculturalism and minority rights? Or is it better seen as the result of a political compromise necessitated by social realities, and strategic tolerance that is used to extract instrumental benefits? Part I of this book shows three things: first, the contemporary practice of official multilingualism distinguishes itself from historical approaches in linguistic management, including the monolingual model that emerged along with the modern nationstate. Second, the phenomenon is widespread and has penetrated polities at sub-state, state, and international levels. Its prevalence in post-colonial polities shows its perceived value as a conflict-avoidance strategy and as a means of mitigating colonial influence in nation-building. Adopting a national language policy for economic integration and trade, on the other hand, reflects increased acceptance of the commodification of national symbols under late capitalism. Third, official multilingualism is driven primarily by pragmatic concerns, rather than normative forces: the granting of official status to two or more languages
xi
can be used to achieve such goals as balancing rival powers, establishing political legitimacy, making a sovereignty claim, and pursuing economic interests. Such divergent functions may be performed because official language law works chiefly as a discursive resource, showcasing what I call a symbolic jurisprudence.
Part II of the book examines the practical impact of official multilingualism on public institutions and legal processes, and investigates how linguistic equality is applied on the ground. The study raises questions about the nature of official language rights and linguistic equality, the value of which is often taken for granted, thanks to, at least in part, the positive connotations that the terms rights and equality carry. The investigation shows that if linguistic equality – implicitly or explicitly provided by parallel multilingualism – is taken seriously, it calls for elaborate administrative effort in public institutions and carries a potential to clash with existing legal practices (from legal drafting and interpretation, to language rights in trial proceedings). However, such changes hardly ever disrupt the status quo. Moreover, formal adoption of multilingualism in sovereign states always falls short of full-fledged implementation and languages that receive equal official status are never really treated equally. Not only is there an issue of political goodwill and commitment, but linguistic equality habitually fails to compete with other priorities for resources, and in many practical domains it is not clear at all how linguistic equality is achievable without compromising other legal values and social good. But perhaps it is a good thing that linguistic equality has to compete with other social values and legal norms, because, as I argue, linguistic equality as claimed and practiced today is shallow in character, and shallow equality needs to be distinguished from popular conceptions of equality which form the foundation of liberal politics and have clear emancipatory potential. The book concludes that both symbolic jurisprudence and shallow equality are components of a policy of strategic pluralism that underlies official multilingualism. Although official multilingualism is not necessarily morally superior to official monolingualism, it can be legitimately used to pursue collective goals, but with the underlying risks that formal equality may disguise socioeconomic inequalities, and that over-investment in a multilingual regime may displace efforts that can bring about more progressive social change.
Introduction
LANGUAGE AND LAW IN THE WHIRLPOOL OF POLITICS
The day after former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted, the first act in power by the new interim government was to revoke a controversial law. The targeted legislation, called On the Principles of the State Language Policy, makes any minority language an additional official language of a region if 10% or more of its population speaks it as a first language. Ukraine only has one state language (Ukrainian) but this law—seemingly politically neutral because its application is based purely on linguistic demographics— has the practical effect of making Russian a second official language in 13 out of 27 regions of the country, and was widely seen as a move to strengthen Yanukovych’s Russian-speaking political base in the parliamentary election.1 It was adopted in 2012 amid fistfights in the parliament, sparking violent riots and drawing concerns that it would threaten the sovereignty of the country.2 The nationalist administration that took over power in 2014 vowed to restore Ukrainian to its position as the sole official language of the whole state. This would include the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which had a majority Russian population and had a constitution3 that guaranteed the official use of Russian and Crimean Tatar4 along with Ukrainian. The move to repeal the
1 In 2011, 42.8% of the population spoke the Ukrainian language as their first language, and 38.7% spoke Russian.
2 Miriam Elder, “Ukrainians Protest against Russian Language Law,” The Guardian, July 4, 2012, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/04/ukrainians-protest-russian-languagelaw; David Stern, “Ukrainians Polarised over Language Law,” BBC News, July 5, 2012, sec. Europe, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18725849.
3 The 1998 Constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which was in effect until it was replaced by the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea on April 11, 2014.
4 A quarter of a million people identify themselves as Crimean Tatars. They are descended from a Turkic vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Crimean Khanate, between the 15th and 18th C.
Janny H. C. Leung. Shallow Equality and Symbolic Jurisprudence. © Oxford University Press, 2019. Published 2019 by Oxford University Press.
law5 catalyzed pro-Russian protests all around the country. It might have been the tipping point, as some analysts called it, that provided an opportunity for the Russian annexation of Crimea shortly thereafter.6
Crimea has a Russian-speaking majority (58.5%) but also a significant minority population who speak Ukrainian (24.4%) and Crimean Tatar (12.1%). These minorities are generally opposed to the Russian occupation. After the annexation, the Crimean-Tatar language has been promoted to a state language, alongside Ukrainian and Russian, on the peninsula. This formal elevation of legal status (from official to state) and assertion of linguistic equality, however, was accompanied by the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to declare the self-governing body of the Crimean Tatars (known as the Mejlis) an extremist organization and to ban all its activities,7 as well as United Nations reports of human rights abuses against pro-Ukrainian minorities, the tightening of political control (for example, seven popular Crimean Tatar media outlets were denied license to operate8), and dwindling minority linguistic rights9 in the region.
The language politics in Ukraine is particularly intriguing in view of the complexities of its language situation. Census data provide a grossly simplified picture.10 First, the boundary between Ukrainian and Russian is far from clearly drawn, both in terms of the languages and the ethnic identity of their speakers. The Ukrainian language is heavily Russified (in addition to having Polish influence), after five hundred years of foreign rule (especially under Russian decrees) in Ukraine. Bilingualism in Ukrainian and Russian is part of everyday life in major Ukrainian cities. A significant population of Ukrainians speak surzhyk, a sort of mixed language between Ukrainian and Russian.11 Furthermore, the language that people identify with may not be their main language of communication or their first language. Survey data show that Ukrainians who claim that Ukrainian is their native language may nevertheless prefer to use Russian
5 At the time of writing, a replacement bill—Draft Law on the State Language—is being tabled. In the meantime, other legislation has been passed to restrict the use of Russian in national television and education.
6 Robert Hunter Wade, “The Ukraine Crisis Is Not What It Seems,” Le Monde Diplomatique (English Edition), 2015, https://mondediplo.com/outsidein/the-ukraine-crisis-is-not-what-it-seems
7 In September 2016. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine 16 August to 15 November 2016,” n.d.
8 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine 16 February to 15 May 2015,” n.d.
9 Directorate-General for External Policies, Policy Department, “The Situation of National Minorities in Crimea Following Its Annexation by Russia” (European Parliament, 2016).
10 Census data rely on self-report and tend to be organized into mutually exclusive categories that bear little resemblance to reality.
11 See Laada Bilaniuk, “A Typology of Surzhyk: Mixed Ukrainian-Russian Language,” International Journal of Bilingualism 8, no. 4 (December 1, 2004): 409–25, https://doi.org/10.1177/ 13670069040080040101, for a typology of language use that the term has come to stand for.
in communication, that only just over half of Ukraine’s residents who claim Russian as their native language declare themselves as ethnically Russian, and that some respondents reported mixed ethnic identities.12 Finally, language ideologies about Ukrainian and Russian are multifaceted, due to the transition of what has been largely a class distinction (corresponding with education level and the urban vs. rural divide) into an ethnic one. Although the Russian language represented a dominating power in the Ukrainian history, the language is associated positively with prestige, modernity, and economic opportunities.13 On the other hand, Ukrainian is viewed more as a peasant language, but at the same time it also indexes an ethnocultural and national identity.
Ukraine provides a dramatic example of how deeply language cuts into identity politics, illustrating that the power of language rests not only in its function as a communication tool, but also in its capacity for indexing identity.14 Even where the change of an official language status does not impede communication in the public domain, the symbolic significance of such status alone can affirm some citizens’ sense of self and offend others. It is not a coincidence that the enactment or amendment of official language law invariably happens at critical political junctures, when a shift of power takes place or threatens to take place.
The case of Ukraine also raises questions about the meaning of official language law and the nature of linguistic equality implied or proclaimed in such law. Both the inclusion of Russian as a second official language and its threatened expulsion later on were seen as extremely provocative. Status recognition or non-recognition may express deep political meaning—but it may also be taken only as political theater. For example, status equality among Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean-Tatar conferred in the Crimean constitution after the Russian annexation is seen as a political act done only for show, creating a rhetoric of equality that exists only on paper. The actual linguistic freedom enjoyed by the Crimean Tatars appears to be diminishing, disclosing a disjuncture between legal recognition of official language status and political reality. The astonishing semiotic flexibility of official language status makes one wonder what purposes official language law is meant to serve.
For all the blood and sweat that have been shed over it, official language status is surprisingly void of legal meaning. Although the status label may be
12 Volodymyr Kulyk, “Language Identity, Linguistic Diversity and Political Cleavages: Evidence from Ukraine,” Nations and Nationalism 17, no. 3 (2011): 627–48; Volodymyr Kulyk, “Language Policy in Ukraine: What People Want the State to Do,” East European Politics and Societies 27, no. 2 (May 1, 2013): 280–307, https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325412474684
13 Aneta Pavlenko, “Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Successor States,” Language and Linguistics Compass 7, no. 4 (April 1, 2013): 262–71, https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12024
14 Michael Silverstein, “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology,” in The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, ed. Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks, and Carol L. Hofbauer (Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 1979), 193–247.
socially meaningful and may create all sorts of expectations, such as greater political rights, career advantage, respect, and access to public resources for speakers of an official language, its vagueness in legal meaning opens up possibilities for political use that is tangential to these expectations.
Making Sense of Multilingual Legal Orders
The Ukrainian case also exemplifies how societal multilingualism and law,15 the former an ubiquitous condition and the latter a default governing regime of modern societies,16 at times have a treacherous relationship. Such a relationship has not entirely escaped research attention, but systematic effort to study it has been circumscribed by disciplinary biases and boundaries. This book builds upon fragmented studies from various related disciplines (including but not limited to linguistics, law, sociology, anthropology, and political science) and tackles important questions that existing studies (see next section of this Introduction) have not confronted in depth.
Today more than 7,000 languages (according to ethnologue.com; estimates vary17) exist in fewer than 200 countries (193 of which are members of the United Nations since 2011). Societal multilingualism confronts almost every modern state—hardly any state governs a population that speaks only one language.18 How do states deal with the gap between the ideal of one nation, one language, and the reality of their multilingual population? Why do some states become officially multilingual but not others? How do international organizations cope with linguistic diversity among their member states? In fact, since societal multilingualism has perpetuated throughout human civilization, why has official multilingualism become more prevalent today than ever before? Not all language policies have to acquire legal force, and not all legal intervention of
15 Although the boundary of law has been increasingly challenged by legal anthropologists and sociolegal scholarship, for the purpose of this book I will restrict my discussion of legal multilingualism to official law (including state law, and codified practices in international organizations, regional unions, and international agreements), while acknowledging that official legal systems may be formalized to various degrees (consider, for example, customary law that may operate in parallel with a modernized legal system within the same polity). Sally Falk Moore, “Law and Anthropology,” Biennial Review of Anthropology 6 (1969): 252–300; Sally Engle Merry, “Legal Pluralism,” Law and Society Review 22, no. 5 (1988): 869–96.
16 Philip R. Wood, The Fall of the Priests and the Rise of the Lawyers (Oxford; Portland, OR: Hart, 2016).
17 No “accurate” estimate is possible, given the fuzzy boundary between languages. The delineation of languages in a dialectal spectrum is notoriously arbitrary.
18 Iceland, Korea, and Japan are often cited as rare examples of monolingual states, not taking into account immigrants and visitors. The issue is debatable. For example, in Japan, Ainu and arguably Okinawan are distinct languages from Japanese, and in Korea, the Jeju language is recognized as a distinct local language. Although there used to be Gaelic- and Danish-speaking minorities in Iceland, it may be the closest thing to a monolingual state today.
language has to be done through conferring official status, so why law, why official status, and why multiplicity of official status? What role does law play in managing societal multilingualism, and why is official status often recognized constitutionally, by the supreme law of the land? In practical terms, what changes does such high-level legal recognition have the potential to create in public institutions, including legislature and judiciary? More specifically, how often do language rights flow from official status? What does effort, or sometimes the lack of effort, in translating official status into legally enforceable legislation say about official language law? Do language rights necessarily have emancipatory power, and is linguistic equality necessarily socially valuable?
Part I of the book, consisting of three chapters, focuses on forces that create official multilingualism. The first chapter historicizes the phenomenon. It discusses the various solutions that polities have used in the past to deal with linguistic diversity, and what social and political climates prompt the adoption of these different solutions. I highlight why some earlier solutions are unattractive or impractical in many modern states, and outline the distinctiveness of official multilingualism in the contemporary world. In order to give a sense of scale, the second chapter surveys officially bilingual or multilingual jurisdictions in the world today. The data lend empirical support to the historical analysis of the preceding chapter, and reveal patterns and trends in the global adoption of official multilingualism. Analysis of the data suggests that official multilingualism has become a core element of many national narratives as told through their constitutions. Contributing to the political stability of transitional states, official multilingualism is also very much a post-colonial legacy. Building from observations made in the preceding chapters, Chapter 3 assesses why official status is granted to multiple languages in some jurisdictions but not others, and offers a theory of how official multilingual law works. In my account of symbolic jurisprudence, official language law is usually vaguely drafted and provides the rhetorical resource to satisfy the demands of multiple audiences. The symbolic capital it raises can then be turned into political and economic capital. In international organizations, for example, equal recognition of dominant languages is used to balance centers of political power. For sovereign states, official multilingualism has become a popular strategy to subdue potential threats to territorial integrity, make assertions about sovereignty, and legitimize a political regime. There is also a growing trend to use state language law as a commodity in transnational economics, exemplifying capitalist logic in what is traditionally a terrain used to mark national pride and identity. Adoption of a global language into domestic law is used to trade for access to regional or global markets.
Part II of the book, consisting of four chapters, focuses on forces that may be created by official multilingualism. Chapters 4 to 7 are devoted to the practical dimensions of official multilingualism, illustrating the kind and degree of accommodation that has been made to implement linguistic equality, and what
ripples and ruptures have been created in public institutions and legal processes. By focusing on different areas of legal implementation, these chapters offer a range of perspectives about why linguistic equality is a seemingly unachievable goal, and why official multilingualism does not tend to disrupt the status quo. These chapters are not meant to be encyclopedic, to detail the full range of impacts that official multilingualism may bring; nor do they investigate what impact is most typically observed among all bilingual and multilingual jurisdictions. If anything, the primary examples chosen are among jurisdictions that are most radically multilingual: either in terms of number of official languages, or in terms of their long history, elaborate institutional effort, and evident commitment to the cause. This approach allows us to gauge what the possible impacts of official multilingualism are, as it develops and matures. Chapter 4 compares efforts made by different jurisdictions in institutionalizing official multilingualism, such as turning constitutional aspirations into enforceable legislation and setting up administrative structures to ensure compliance. Significant legal weight is often conferred to official language law, but the strength of the law tends to dramatically weaken during implementation. This may have to do with the fact that although elaborate institutional structures have sometimes been developed, they are non-representational and bureaucratic in character. Chapter 5 deals with challenges in creating the texts of multilingual law, through translation, innovation in drafting practices, and linguistic and ideological engineering. Despite the formal equality offered to official languages in some jurisdictions, existent power hierarchies still seep through translation and drafting practices. Formal equality provided by the law cannot easily alter socially constructed ideologies about languages. Chapter 6 discusses inherent dilemmas in interpreting multilingual law. Since multilingual texts of the law are capable of having more than one literal meaning, multilingual jurisdictions that uphold the equal authenticity principle tend to move away from a textualist approach to legal interpretation. I argue that judicial discretion is widened in multilingual interpretation, and that emphasis on the equality of texts may paradoxically come into conflict with linguistic access to law. Given that official status creates the expectation of legal protection and rights, Chapter 7 investigates how language status may be translated into enforceable rights in legal proceedings. In states where official status serves a purely symbolic function, no language rights at all flow from it. Where language rights have been derived from official status, some of these rights, such as the right to a bilingual jury, threaten to challenge existing legal practices, raising questions about how linguistic equality should be valued against legal principles that come into conflict with it.
The final chapter, Chapter 8, takes stock of the insights developed in the preceding chapters and examines the nature of linguistic equality that is often proclaimed in multilingual jurisdictions. It critiques the shallow character of linguistic equality as posited and practiced in multilingual legal order today,
and cautions against excessive optimism about the emancipatory potential of official language rights. Both shallow equality and symbolic jurisprudence are components of strategic pluralism, which prioritizes the interests of the polity before those of language communities.
The scope of issues that this book deals with does not fit neatly into a single academic discipline. Such is the nature of real world problems. In order to form a holistic picture, I have drawn concepts and ideas from not only from law and linguistics (including its subfields such as language policy and language politics), but also from anthropology, sociology, political theory, and history, and have attempted to converge cross-disciplinary knowledge wherever possible. I can, of course, in no way claim expertise in all of these fields. As such, errors and omissions are unavoidable, and I must acknowledge the limitations of my reach. Moreover, the multidimensionality of the subject matter defies a singular research method. I have used the best available sources of data that I have access to, which include constitutional and legislative documents, governmental publications and records, official communications and brochures, legal cases, news reports, official websites, speeches, and academic work. Most of the book comprises data-driven comparative study, and both quantitative and qualitative analyses have been performed wherever appropriate. Although the book makes reference to some ethnographic work done by others and myself, one obvious shortcoming is that it does not offer extensive, original fieldwork done on the ground (e.g., interviews and site observations). This is inevitable given the macroscopic focus and global coverage of the project. My analysis of the consequences of official multilingualism is also limited to public institutions (where the most direct impact of official multilingualism is supposed to take place), and does not extend to how these forces affect people’s private lives, group identity, or inter-group relationships. Neither does it directly probe into people’s subjective experiences of the law. In terms of theoretical contribution, I have no desire to propose a grand theory of official multilingualism, but I am eager to connect the dots and have endeavored to do enough theorizing to make sense of the phenomena that I have observed and reported. I encourage interested readers to supplement, refine, or challenge the account made in this book based on their work in different geographical locations.
My hope, despite all the potential imperfections and inherent risks of the project, is that this book lays the groundwork for mapping and dissecting a global phenomenon that has been under-documented, under-analyzed and under-theorized. Some of the references, even if incomplete, can give the reader a pointer in his or her explorations.