Theoretical Frameworks of Linguistic Human Rights in Tertiary Education
Theoretical perspectives on multilingual education in South Africa reveal divergent conceptual approaches to understanding the persistent marginalization of indigenous African languages within higher education. One foundational perspective conceptualizes language access through the critical framework of linguistic human rights, asserting that institutional policies frequently undermine linguistic diversity despite progressive constitutional and legislative guarantees (W2766445531). Under this theoretical model, tertiary institutions perpetuate exclusionary pedagogical environments because the entrenched language ideologies that govern curricular design and administrative policy remain largely unexamined, thereby compromising the linguistic human rights of tertiary students (W2766445531). In contrast, an alternative structural-planning perspective interprets this linguistic disparity through the theoretical lens of policy incongruity and statutory planning mechanics (W2035928758). This approach theorizes that the central impediment to transformation resides in an unresolved systemic gap between progressive political intention and practical administrative performance in post-apartheid governance. Rather than focusing exclusively on internal university ideologies, this framework highlights the pivotal role of statutory planning agencies in actively confronting negative societal attitudes toward African languages through structured language marketing and ecological planning (W2035928758). While rights-based frameworks position ideological critique as an internal institutional responsibility, structural-planning models emphasize external statutory mediation to secure the long-term ecological wellbeing of indigenous languages as formal instructional media. Synthesizing these distinct theoretical frameworks reveals that achieving epistemic access and transformative multilingualism in South African higher education requires simultaneous engagement with internal institutional ideologies and systemic statutory planning mechanisms.