Conceptualising children’s linguistic rights in formal education in Greece

Abstract

Linguistic rights as a cornerstone for inclusive education, have often been linked to language education. However, in the context of an applied approach in education, there is a lack of clarity concerning the conceptualisation gf linguistic rights as well as their visibility in official policy texts and discourse among policymakers internationally. A body of scientists have taken a critical approach to (linguistic) human rights to question the need for a reconceptualization of linguistic (human) rights. In this context, our paper attempts to capture and discuss the different conceptualizations of linguistic rights focusing on children’s (language) education in the Greek context. Drawing from transdisciplinary ethnography based mainly on sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, law studies, and political science, combined with principles of decolonizing human rights we carried out a (critical) discourse analysis of interviews with policymakers from different institutions as well as of educational policy texts. The findings demonstrate different ¨paradoxes¨ of conceptualizing linguistic rights, resulting in the need to encourage a situated, non-Western, ¨non-childish¨ and distributed with legal guarantees approach to linguistic rights in education as a basis for establishing multilingual decolonized language policies for more just education.