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Linguistic Justice, van Parijs, and Esperanto Cover
By: Federico Gobbo  
Open Access
|Oct 2016

Abstract

In the European and world-wide scenario of linguistic justice offered by van Parijs (2011), it is argued that we need one lingua franca only and that the only suitable candidate is English. In order to sustain his argument, the author has to reject three known alternatives against the English-only scenario. The second alternative is Esperanto. Van Parijs argues that there are some inner defects in the Esperanto language, and therefore Esperanto is not suitable for the role of world-wide lingua franca. This paper offers counterarguments based on the evidence of facts, showing that if nowadays Esperanto is only a lesser-used language the reason is not in the inner traits of the language, rather in geopolitical decisions. I argue that in the most probable global scenario English still plays the actual major role, but along with other cultural languages being regional lingua francas.

Language: English
Page range: 55 - 61
Published on: Oct 26, 2016
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2016 Federico Gobbo, published by Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.