MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory

With Seunghyun Song (Tilburg University) and Sergi Morales-Gálvez (University of València), Andrew Shorten organised a workshop on ‘New Directions in Linguistic Justice’ for the annual MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, held at the University of Manchester (Sept 4-6).

Support by way of AHSS funding is gratefully acknowledged. Contributors presented new work on feminist linguistic justice, linguistic autonomy, multilingual deliberation, multilingual trust, linguistic solidarity, native speaker ideologies and language policy in Ireland. Shorten presented a paper bringing recent developments in democratic theory into dialogue with a longstanding debate on the problems and potential of multilingual democracy. Specifically, the paper he presented compared four linguistic mediation strategies (adopting a lingua franca, translation and interpretation, passive multilingualism and institutional linguistic pluralism) according to whether they are likely to support (or frustrate) key democratic functions through a range of generic political practices (recognising, resisting, deliberating, representing, voting, joining and exiting).