as with the Indian need to operate in English because of the multiplicity of
local languages.
Language probably has its deep political significance because of the way in
which our thoughts, stock of concepts, and very self-image are reflected by
language and restricted by it. Thus it is more rational, perhaps, to define
political culture around language than most other cleavage patterns, and this
may account for the virulence of language-group politics. In modern societies,
however, linguistic politics are sometimes deeply resented by residents of the
relevant language area who have accepted political assimilation with the
speakers of the dominant tongue, and who regard adherence to the indigenous
language as atavistic or even merely nostalgic.
Law
Law is any system of widely recognized and compulsory regulations that
govern the behaviour of citizens or political actors, either between each other,
or between actor and some overall power or authority. Within the complexities
of the theory of law it may be generally accepted that there are two broad
schools of thought. On the one hand there is thepositive lawtradition,
particularly strong in American and English legal thinking, in which all law is
seen as positive, as direct commands from someone or something able to
enforce them. This school, represented in the United Kingdom by the works
of H. L. A. Hart (1907–92), tends to differentiate sharply between law and
morality, and to treat any command from ade jurepower as lawful and legally
binding, whatever its character. It also seeks to deny the status of ‘law’ to non-
enforceable rules, such as those otherwise recognized as making up the body of
conventions and expectations known as ‘international’ law. On the other hand
there is what is often referred to as thenatural lawschool, which is dominant
in continental Europe and which sees law as somehow representing binding
obligations arising from a prior moral sphere, to which the actual positive laws
merely give effect (or ought to). Other basic characteristics of law, for example,
whether or not they must always be universal in character, what authorities in a
society may promulgate them or when, if ever, they may legitimately be
denied, are bound up with these broader theoretical problems. Until relatively
recently the positive law tradition was dominant in American and English legal
thinking, and most common among practitioners of law, if not theorists,
everywhere, but this position is increasingly challenged, especially by writers
in the new liberal tradition followingRawlsandNozick. Law, rather like
democracy, acts as a powerful symbolic restraint in political argument: few
would ever dare admit that their actions were illegal but good, rather they
would attempt to justify them by criticizing the validity of the laws they were
breaking. The reason is the same in both cases; in the modern world there are
Law