Uncompromising talk, linguistic grievance, and language policy: Thailand’s deep south conflict zone

Abstract

This chapter aims to identify and describe some ways in which language and political violence are related. The main focus is the protracted conflict in the Deep South of Thailand whose complex causes include irreconcilable public claims for the symbolic granting of official recognition to the Patani Malay language, but also pragmatic issues such as its use in public administration, and as the medium of instruction in schools. The range of functions that languages perform in conflicted relations can exacerbate independently arising tensions but can also be an object of tension in themselves, linked in the chapter to a search to understand what constitutes a language grievance. Addressing lang..