Rights, language regimes, and language policy: An international perspective

In this introduction to the special issue on Rights, Language Regimes, and Language Policy: An International Perspective, the guest editors explore how language rights, language regimes, and language policy interact. Noting the increased interest in language rights in recent decades, they start by exploring the different manifestations of language rights at the international, regional, and national levels, before considering the more complex interactions between language rights, language regimes, and language policies within States. The guest editors then discuss how the articles in this special issue explore these complex interactions within particular national (and, in one case, international) contexts. They demonstrate how these articles shed light on the potential—and the limitations—of particular language rights, regimes, and policies for managing linguistic diversity and multilingualism, and reveal the difficult balance that must be struck in order to manage linguistic diversity fairly and effectively.