Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In this entry, I chart the five principal concerns underpinning advocacy for minority language rights (MLR). The first concern addresses the parlous nature of many of the world's languages, particularly Indigenous languages, via exponential processes of language shift and loss. The second concern addresses the sociohistorical and sociopolitical processes that have resulted in certain languages, and their speakers, becoming “minoritized” in the first place. A key influence here is modern nation‐state organization and its underpinning principle of establishing a national language—sometimes, rarely, several national languages—to ensure (public) linguistic homogeneity. A third, and related, concern is the privileging of monolingualism, via the notion of “language replacement”—which often results in minority language speakers learning dominant (national and international) languages at the specific expense of the languages they already know. The fourth concern focuses on the legal protections available to minority language speakers in relation to their ongoing language use. The fifth, and final, concern addresses how to recognize language rights, while at the same time avoid essentializing the languages, and their speakers, to which these rights might apply. These five underlying concerns provide the basis for the ongoing articulation of MLR in a world where national languages and international languages continue to undermine the retention of most of the world's spoken languages.</jats:p>