Language policy and transitional justice: rights and reconciliation

Abstract

Transitional justice (TJ) scenarios are where a society is moving from war to peace or from authoritarianism to democracy. A key goal of TJ is to balance atoning for past abuses of human rights with creating the conditions for social and political stability in the future, and this requires avoiding forms of “victor’s justice” whereby one system of oppression is simply replaced with another. TJ questions, then, are not merely about justice, but about justice and prudence: not merely whom to punish and by what authority, but to what ends (Arthur in Hum Rights Q 31:321–367, 2009). These ends, according to de Greiff (Nomos 51:31–77, 2012), are reconciliation and democratization, achieved primarily via the recognition of wrongdoings and victims, and the rebuilding of civic trust. It is questionable, therefore, whether the emphasis on legality and punishment should be the primary mechanism of TJ or, as Roht-Arriaza (in: Roht-Arriaza, Mariezcurrena (eds) Transitional justice in the twenty-first century: beyond truth versus justice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 1, 2006) suggests, more emphasis should be placed on education, identities, and culture. By extension, TJ scenarios may have sociolinguistic dimensions, particularly where linguistic repression has been a cipher for broader political repression, and where abuses of human rights are linked to abuses of language-based rights. In this article, I argue that language policy reform has been empirically a crucial site for the operation of TJ, but that the relationship between the two has so far been undertheorized. I thus present a theoretical framework of TJ-focused language policy that is applied broadly to Sri Lanka, South Africa, Taiwan, and indigenous residential schools in Canada as case studies. I conclude by calling for scholars to further develop this framework, so that it can be used by activists, practitioners, and policymakers in real-world contexts.