In Chaper 1 PvP takes note in a factual way that English has become the lingua franca of Europe and probably of the whole world. From a normative perspective he wellcomes the existence of a universal lingua franca and this especially because of his interest to achieve Egalitarian Global Justice. PvP is very outspoken on this subject : ” any honest attempt to think seriously about justice for our century must downgrade nations and states from the ethical framework to the institutional toolkit.” (p.26) It is not so important for PvP that English is the universal lingua franca ; the important point is that there is a lingua franca (in the making).
There are two key reasons why PvP needs a universal Lingua franca to realise Egalitarian Global Justice. First, we need such language to raise awareness about our basic egalitarian status, to enable a process of “ethical contagion”. Second, such language is needed to construct a demos, a political group that is ready to implement at a world-wide level a state of global egalitarian justice.
In the next four chapters PvP will discuss if the existence of a universal lingua franca does in itself not create great injustices of its own.
In chapter 2 PvP focuses on what he considers to be merely “wrinkles on the surface”. It relates to injustice as a consequence of a free-rider phenomenon ; native English speakers profit from the fact that non-native English make the effort to learn English and they do not pay a compensation (tax) for this. In a context of linguistic justice such situation can not be understood as a “fair cooperation”. However, this free-rider phenomenon is offset by a free-rider phenomenon in the other direction ; non-native English speakers profit from their access to information made available by the community of native English speakers. Both phenomena cancel each other out and justice is served.
In chapter 3 PvP focuses on linguistic justice as “equal opportunity”, a principle which also seems disrespected in a world in which the lingua franca is in the making. People who have the lingua franca as native language are favoured because they have better access to jobs which require knowledge of the lingua franca, they fulfil the linguistic requirements for other jobs, they are betteŕ in face-to-face interaction in the lingua franca and they have access to the broad media in the lingua franca. “This privilege is understandably perceived as a senior distributive injustice by those who do not enjoy it…”. Subsequently PvP discusses how this inequality should be treated. The best solution is according to him to speed up the distribution of the knowledge of the lingua franca. He notices that in some countries, mostly with a relative strong language, the spread of the lingua franca is slowed down by the use of dubbing and therefore PvP is in favour of a prohibition of dubbing.
In chapter 4 PvP turns to the fact that the rise of the lingua franca can be met by a feeling of injustice in the form of lack of “parity of esteem”. People will feel it as an injustice that their native language is not treated in the same way as the lingua franca. According to PvP “This is a dimension of justice commonly ignored in theories of distributive justice, including my own, as developed in Real Freedom for All.” However PvP does not seem to bother too much about this form of injustice. Again it will melt away with the distribution of the lingua franca. The more people are familiar with English, the less they will insist on an equal treatment of their own native language.
But in chapter 5 PvP takes note that in practice, in Europe, parity of esteem is realised to a great extent by a system of linguistic territoriality. Weaker languages are protected by borders and coercive regimes against socio-linguistic processes. Further, PvP starts developing a justification of this “territoriality”-principle within his framework of Global Egalitarian Justice. And remarkably he does not want to use national sovereignty as an axiom in this search :
“Appeal to national sovereignty, however, would be inappropriate in the present context. Nations, politically organized people’s, are not part of the ethical framework of Global Egalitarian Justice. They are sheer instruments to be created and dismantled, structured and absorbed, empowered and constrained, in the service of justice understood as far more than the sheer protection of fundamental liberties. Consequently, whether a territorial linguistic regime is legitimate is not a question that can be settled by appealing to national sovereignty, but rather one that needs to be settled in order to determine how extensive national sovereignty is allowed to be.”
In the fifth and last chapter of his book PvP discusses the (lack of) importance of linguistic diversity.
Overall PvP develops in this book a theory of linguistic justice embedded in a target to realise “Global Egalitarian Justice”. In that context he welcomes the development of a lingua franca, English, and investigates whether this development creates injustices. He treats the potential cooperative injustice, distributive injustice (lack of equal opportunity) and lack of parity of esteem and underpins the use of territorial integrity to preserve the weaker languages and therefore the parity of esteem (without using the principle of national sovereignty).
