Politics
Official language status is often connected with wider political issues of sovereignty, cultural nationalism, and the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, including immigrant communities.
For example, the campaign to make English the de jure official language of various states in the United States of America is often seen as a way of marginalizing non English-speaking minorities, particularly Hispanic and Latino Americans, while others see it as a unifying force among numerous immigrant groups. In the Republic of Ireland the decision to make the Irish language an official language was part of a wider program of cultural revitalization, de-anglicisation and Gaelic nationalism following centuries of English rule in Ireland. Despite its status as an official language, Irish has been reduced to a minority language in Ireland as a result of English rule, as is the case in North and South America where various indigenous languages have been replaced by that of the colonists. Various indigenous rights movements have sought greater recognition of their languages, often through official language status.
Read more about this topic: Official Language
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices.... Politics has once again become religious.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes with it except through politics.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)