Language is the people: Resisting cultural erasure through United Nations advocacy

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how State-created language classifications render ethnoculturally distinct peoples invisible within cultural rights frameworks and heritage governance. Focusing on the Boarisch (Bavarian) and Schwäbisch (Swabian) languages in southern Germany, this work argues that the distinction between “language” and “dialect” is not a neutral technical classification but a form of political–cultural governance and a strategy of suppression that determines visibility, eligibility for cultural protection, and access to institutional support. The resulting marginalization and assimilation have also been conceptualized as forms of structural linguistic genocide. Drawing on linguistic Gutachten (expert reports), submissions to United Nations mechanisms, UNESCO cultural policy frameworks, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), and Fourth World Indigenous scholarship, the article shows how cultural nonrecognition weakens intergenerational transmission, limits public participation, and excludes historically rooted languages from formal monitoring and protection. This work further shows that cultural rights indicators can reproduce invisibility and erasure when they assess only State-recognized cultural categories. The author argues that meaningful cultural and human rights implementation requires scrutiny not only of access to existing frameworks but also of the classifications that determine which peoples, languages, and cultural realities become visible in the first place.