Rethinking Multilingual Democracy - Towards a Generative Relational Theory of Governance amid Relational Plurality and Heteromorphic Values 【（Preliminary）Draft】

Posted on 2026-07-27 In Philosophy , Governance Views: Disqus: Word count in article: 23k Reading time ≈ 1:23

ENGLISH

Abstract

Theories of multilingual democracy treat linguistic diversity principally as a problem of communication, of representation, of linguistic rights, or of recognition. Each addresses a real difficulty, and together they leave one thing unexplained: political disagreement in multilingual polities has not diminished in proportion to the very large improvements in translation that recent decades have produced. This paper examines a possible reason. A thought experiment supposes translation to be perfect and asks what would remain, and what remains is the coordination of values that were generated within different relational histories and that no rendering of sentences makes commensurable. The survey concedes that this conclusion is established: anthropological work on ontological conflict has argued at length that disputes of this kind concern worlds and not words, and translation theory has argued that rendering is a value-constituting operation. What that literature has largely left aside is the institutional question, and the specifically multilingual case. Against those gaps the paper advances a graded thesis, that linguistic and cultural communities embody partially distinct relational structures which influence how values are articulated, prioritized, and institutionalized without determining or exhausting them, and derives from it two governance functions that a polity under such conditions requires. It meets the objection that the notion of separate conceptual worlds is incoherent, and concedes that the resulting picture of democracy stands close to an existing account of constitutionalism amid diversity. The account supplies no institutional design, its central thesis is entered as a hypothesis, and the closing questions are held to be the more valuable half of what is offered.

Keywords: multilingual democracy; relational plurality; heteromorphic values; translation; ontological conflict; linguistic justice; governance; generativity.

A note on the standing of this paper. This is a discussion paper and the third of three. It identifies a structure, surveys what existing scholarship has made of it, marks where each account appears to run out, and proposes a direction for work. It does not complete a theory. The survey is conducted in a conceding register, because the central reframing this paper proposes has been reached before within an anthropological literature that the political theory of language rarely cites, and a paper that failed to say so would be worth less than one that says so first. The two companion papers are referred to where their results are used, and the argument is written so that a reader who has not seen them may follow it. Where a claim entered here as open is in fact occupied, or where a source has been read wrongly, correction is welcome at huangwanhong@serendip.ngo.

§1 Introduction

Multilingual polities maintain elaborate arrangements for rendering their public business in several languages. The European Union adopts legislation in each of its official languages with every version equally authentic. Switzerland, Canada, India, Belgium, and South Africa each maintain arrangements of comparable ambition, and the United Nations conducts its formal business in six languages. These arrangements are expensive, they are contested, and they rest on a proposition that has organized the field: linguistic diversity presents a problem of access, and the problem is addressed by translation, by language rights, and by the representation of linguistic communities.

Something has happened to that proposition in the last two decades. The quality and availability of translation have improved by a large margin, and the cost of rendering a text from one language into another has fallen toward zero for many pairs. If linguistic diversity were principally an access problem, the political consequences of that change should be visible. Disagreement within multilingual polities appears to have persisted, and in several settings to have sharpened, across the same period.

The persistence admits of several explanations, and this paper examines one. A thought experiment makes it precise. Suppose translation were perfect, so that every sentence uttered in one language were rendered into every other without loss, instantly and at no cost. Ask what would remain of the difficulty. Two communities may then state their positions to one another with complete fidelity: the first holds a forest to be an ancestor to whom obligations are owed, the second holds it to be a stock of sequestered carbon admitting of valuation and trade. Nothing about that disagreement is relieved by the perfection of the rendering. Each party understands the other exactly, and the question of what the polity is to do about the forest stands where it stood.

What the thought experiment isolates is a residue that translation does not reach. The parties hold values that were generated within different histories of relation, to that forest and to one another, and the values so generated differ in their semantics, in the practices that sustain them, and in what they treat as a reason. Rendering sentences establishes semantic correspondence. Deciding what a polity shall do requires something further, which is the relating of those values to one another on terms that permit a determination. This paper takes the second operation as its subject and asks what a polity does when the values it must relate were generated apart.

A caution belongs immediately after that framing, because the incautious version of it is false. Speakers of different languages do not thereby hold different values, and speakers of one language disagree profoundly. The relation between linguistic community and value is looser than the vivid cases suggest, and §7 states the graded thesis this paper actually defends, on which linguistic and cultural communities embody partially distinct relational structures that influence how values are articulated, prioritized, and institutionalized without determining or exhausting them.

Five bodies of work bear on the question. The political theory of language has examined what a polity owes to speakers of its several languages, treating language as a communicative resource whose distribution raises questions of fairness (Van Parijs 2011; Patten 2014; Kymlicka 1995). Deliberative theory has grounded legitimacy in the conditions of communication among citizens (Habermas 1996). Anthropological work on ontological conflict has argued that disputes of the kind instanced above concern differing worlds and are misdescribed as differing perspectives on one world (Blaser 2013; de la Cadena 2015; Escobar 2018; Viveiros de Castro 2004). Translation theory has argued that rendering is a value-constituting operation admitting of no neutral performance (Cassin 2014; Apter 2013; Asad 1986). Constitutional theory has examined, finally, how a polity may accommodate deep diversity without assimilating it (Tully 1995). These literatures settle a considerable proportion of the subject, and one purpose of this paper is to record how much; the survey below accordingly proceeds by conceding first and locating what remains afterwards.

The account offered here is developed within a framework the author has set out elsewhere, and which may be stated in a sentence:

Generative Relational Being. A theory of how subject, meaning, value, creation, and normativity co-emerge through generative relational processes.

Three features of the framework bear on the present subject. Values are treated as generated within relations, so that a plurality of relational histories yields a plurality of values as a matter of course. Relations are treated as generative, in that a relation in working order produces further determinations of meaning, of value, and of what the relation itself requires. The framework carries, third, a methodological commitment governing how its claims are advanced, its keynote being historical dialectics, so that propositions are entered as revisable within a historical frame, the finitude of knowledge and of practice is acknowledged as a standing condition, and philosophical argument is joined to operable formulation where the subject admits of it. A paper written under that commitment states its claims so that they may be given up.

Applied here, these features suggest that language is one manifestation of relational plurality among several, and that the difficulty a multilingual polity faces is a case of a wider condition. §8 through §9 develop that suggestion and derive from it two governance functions that a polity under such conditions requires.

This is a discussion paper, and its role is correspondingly limited. It identifies a structure, surveys what existing scholarship has made of it, marks where each account appears to run out, and proposes a direction for work; it does not complete a theory, and several of its central propositions are entered as hypotheses awaiting examination. Three matters lie outside the undertaking. The paper proposes no institutional design, and §13 explains why none follows from the account. It takes no position on language policy in any particular jurisdiction. It leaves aside, third, the empirical study of multilingual institutions, which would require methods the paper does not employ.

Four contributions are offered, claimed with differing degrees of confidence. The first is a mapping, locating which questions in this area appear settled and which appear open, and retaining its value independently of whether the proposals below are accepted. The second is the graded thesis of §7, which occupies the space between the claim that language determines value and the claim that language is transparent to it. The third is the derivation in §9 of two governance functions from the conditions stated, which connects this paper to its companions by argument in place of cross-reference. The fourth is a reading of democracy under these conditions, advanced in §10 with an acknowledgement that it stands close to an existing account. The questions set down in §14 are held to be the more valuable half of what is offered.

§2 Scope and Method

2.1 The Containment Device

Three questions organize the discussion, and material earns its place by discharging one of them:

(i) The residue. What remains of the difficulty of multilingual governance once the problems of access, rendering, and representation are supposed solved.

(ii) The source. What accounts for the residue, and what relation holds between linguistic community and the values a community holds.

(iii) The response. What a polity facing the residue is required to do, and what that requirement makes of democracy.

2.2 The Conceding Register

A theory whose components are individually unoriginal may still contribute through the manner in which it joins them, and the joining becomes visible only where the components are correctly attributed. The argument of this paper is architectural, and an architectural argument is weakened by any claim to have quarried its own stone. Where a claim that might have been advanced here appears to be occupied, the relevant section says so and names the occupant. Two sections consist largely of such concessions, and they are placed before the constructive material for that reason.

2.3 The Relation to Two Companion Papers

The argument reaches, at §9, two governance functions that companion papers treat at length. The functions are derived here from the conditions this paper sets out, so that a reader may follow the argument without having seen the companions, and the companions are cited where their results are used. The derivation is the point: two papers that were written separately are shown to answer questions that a third set of conditions generates.

2.4 A Note on Sources

The survey draws on political theory, philosophy of language, social and cultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, and translation studies. These fields cite one another unevenly, and the central observation of this paper was reached within one of them some decades ago and has not travelled into the others. Where that has occurred it is recorded, since the failure of a finding to travel is itself informative about the state of a subject.

§3 Existing Perspectives and the Problems They Address

Each established perspective on multilingual democracy identifies a real difficulty and addresses it. This section sets them out by the problem each takes itself to solve, and records in each case what the perspective brackets.

3.1 Equal Participation

The liberal treatment takes the difficulty to be one of access. A citizen who cannot follow the proceedings of a legislature, read a statute, or address an official in a language they command is excluded from political life by a barrier that has nothing to do with their standing as a citizen. The remedies are translation, interpretation, multilingual publication, and the conduct of official business in more than one language.

The perspective assumes that political disagreement, once the barrier is removed, is disagreement of the ordinary kind, conducted among citizens who now understand one another.

3.2 Mutual Understanding

The deliberative treatment takes the difficulty to be one of communicative reach. Habermas (1996) grounds the legitimacy of norms in the conditions under which they could be adopted through discourse among those subject to them, and a polity whose members cannot address one another falls short of those conditions. Translation on this account serves understanding, and understanding serves legitimacy.

The perspective assumes that the conditions of discourse, once secured, permit the parties to arrive at agreement or at a reasoned recognition of their disagreement.

3.3 Linguistic Justice

The distributive treatment takes the difficulty to be one of unequal burden. Van Parijs (2011) examines the consequences of a shared language for those who must acquire it, argues that the spread of a lingua franca distributes costs and benefits unevenly, and considers what fairness between linguistic groups requires. The treatment is careful and it is explicitly economical in its conception of language: language figures as a communicative resource whose distribution raises questions of justice.

May (2015) presses the objection that concerns the present paper, holding that an account of language confined to its communicative reach passes over its symbolic and identity-constituting functions. The objection has been contested by its target, and it identifies precisely the dimension that this paper takes up.

3.4 Recognition

The multicultural treatment takes the difficulty to be one of standing. Kymlicka (1995) grounds minority rights in the role a societal culture plays in furnishing a context within which choices are meaningful, and Taylor (1994) argues that misrecognition inflicts a harm distinct from maldistribution. Language on these accounts carries identity, and its public status is accordingly a matter of justice.

The perspective assumes that recognition, once extended, permits the recognized to participate as they are. What recognition does about the coordination of a polity whose members are recognized as differing is a further question.

3.5 The Common Assumption

Perspective	Problem addressed	Principal remedy	What it brackets
Equal participation	Exclusion by linguistic barrier	Translation and multilingual provision	Whether understanding resolves the disagreement
Deliberative	Communicative reach among citizens	Conditions of discourse	Whether discourse conditions settle value conflict
Linguistic justice	Uneven burden of a common language	Rights, territoriality, compensation	The symbolic and value-carrying functions of language
Recognition	Standing of linguistic communities	Public status and minority rights	Coordination among the recognized

The perspectives share an assumption that the thought experiment of §4 is designed to test. Each treats language as the locus of the difficulty, so that a polity which has addressed access, burden, and standing has addressed what linguistic diversity presents. None is mistaken about the difficulty it names. The question is whether the difficulties they name exhaust the subject.

3.6 Findings and Residue

Four perspectives address four real difficulties and supply remedies for each. All four locate the difficulty in language and treat the coordination of a polity as a further matter, to be conducted once linguistic obstacles are removed. Whether anything of consequence survives their remedies is the question of the section following.

§4 The Residue after Perfect Translation

4.1 The Supposition

Suppose translation to be perfect. Every utterance in any language is rendered into every other without loss of sense, instantly, at no cost, and with the fidelity of the rendering acknowledged by all parties. The suppositions of §3 are thereby satisfied in the strongest available form: no citizen is excluded by a barrier of language, no party bears the burden of acquiring a common tongue, and every community addresses the polity in its own terms.

Ask what remains.

4.2 The Case

A polity must determine the disposition of a forest. One community within it holds the forest to be an ancestor, standing in a relation of obligation that its members did not choose and cannot dissolve, such that the question of felling is not a question about a resource. Another holds the forest to be a stock of sequestered carbon, correctly valued by the methods used for valuing such stocks, such that the question of felling is a question about a rate.

Under the supposition, each community states its position and the other receives it exactly. The first understands what a carbon stock is and what valuing it involves. The second understands what standing in a relation of obligation to an ancestor amounts to. Neither is confused, and no further rendering is available to be performed.

The determination the polity must make stands where it stood. What is required is a decision about what the polity shall do, and the positions before it are related in no way that yields one.

4.3 The Residue Isolated

Working hypothesis on the residue. The difficulty that survives perfect translation concerns the relating of values to one another on terms permitting a determination. Rendering establishes what each party is saying. Governance requires, further, that what the parties are saying be brought into relations of priority, of equivalence, of threshold, or of admissibility, and no operation on sentences supplies those relations.

4.4 The Standing of the Argument

The thought experiment is a presentational device and the conclusion it reaches is held widely. Three attributions are owed.

Work on the political dimension of disagreement has long held that improved communication leaves conflict substantially intact where the conflict concerns interests, power, or values. Shapiro (1999) presses this against deliberative accounts, and Mouffe (2000) holds conflict to be constitutive of the political and treats the expectation of consensus as a misunderstanding of it.

Anthropological work on ontological conflict has reached the same conclusion by a different route, and §5 treats it at length.

Translation theory has established that rendering is never a neutral operation, so that the supposition of perfect translation is itself questionable. Quine (1960) argues that reference is underdetermined by the evidence available for translation. Cassin (2014) treats the untranslatable as the sign of the way in which conceptual networks fail to superimpose across languages. Apter (2013) presses the political consequences of assuming frictionless equivalence, and Asad (1986) records the asymmetry of the languages between which anthropological translation is conducted.

What the supposition contributes is accordingly modest. It sets the conclusion out in a form that isolates the residue by stipulation, and it does so in the setting of democratic governance, where the conclusion has been less often drawn than in anthropology and translation studies.

4.5 Findings and Residue

Perfect translation leaves a residue, and the residue concerns the relating of values, leaving the rendering of sentences aside. The conclusion is established in three literatures, and the stipulative framing that isolates it in the democratic setting is the paper’s contribution here.

§5 Ontological Conflict as an Established Object of Study

The largest concession of this paper is owed to a literature that reached its central observation some decades ago.

5.1 The Established Position

Blaser (2013) treats conflicts of the kind instanced in §4 as conflicts between differing realities, and argues that describing them as differences of cultural perspective upon a single world subordinates one party in advance. His central case concerns an orca that one party identified as a whale of interest to marine biology and another as a returned chief, and the structure of that case is the structure of the forest.

de la Cadena (2015) examines the entry of Andean earth-beings into political dispute and argues that the category of culture is inadequate to what occurs there, since what is at issue is an antagonism between worlds. Escobar (2018) develops the vocabulary of the pluriverse, a world in which many worlds are accommodated, in explicit opposition to an ontology admitting one. Descola (2013) supplies a systematic typology of the schemes by which collectives compose relations among humans and non-humans.

Viveiros de Castro (2004) supplies the treatment closest to the argument of §4. Communication across such divisions is characterized as controlled equivocation, on which the difficulty is not that the parties fail to find a common referent but that each supposes the other to be referring to what they refer to themselves. Stated in that form, the point of §4 was made two decades before this paper.

5.2 The Concession Stated

Two propositions that a relational account might wish to advance are occupied by this literature. The proposition that disputes of the instanced kind concern differing worlds and are misdescribed as differing views of one world is its founding commitment. The proposition that such disputes are not relieved by improved translation, and that a proclaimed equivalence across them subordinates the weaker party, is stated within it directly.

5.3 The Residue

Two things appear to remain.

The literature is thin on institutions. Stengers (2005) offers a procedural proposal organized around figures of diplomacy and around the deliberate slowing of consensus, and states that the proposal is not a programme. Latour (2004) offers the developed institutional treatment, proposing a constitution for a collective assembled through stated procedures, and Meyer (2012) argues that the proposal remains underspecified at the point where it would have to generate legitimate resolutions. The vocabulary of the uncommons, developed in de la Cadena and Blaser (2018), describes a ground of negotiation whose vocation is expressly not to reach finality. A polity that must decide the disposition of a forest by a date is left with little.

The literature is largely silent on language. Its cases concern indigenous cosmopolitics, design, and the composition of collectives, and the specifically multilingual condition of a polity conducting business in several official languages is not its subject. The connection between that literature and the political theory of language surveyed in §3 appears not to have been made.

5.4 Findings and Residue

The reframing of value conflict as conflict between worlds is established, and the observation that translation does not relieve it is established with it. The residue lies in the institutional question and in the multilingual case, and the two literatures that would jointly address them have not been brought together.

§6 The Objection from Conceptual Schemes

An objection stands against any account that speaks of separate worlds, and it is serious enough to be met before the constructive argument proceeds.

6.1 The Objection

Davidson (1974) argues that the notion of a conceptual scheme radically different from our own, and untranslatable into it, is incoherent. Identifying something as a language, or as thought, or as belief, already presupposes substantial translatability, since interpretation proceeds by attributing to the interpreted a largely true and largely consistent set of beliefs. Evidence that some activity resists interpretation in our language is equally evidence that the activity is not speech. Complete failure of translation would establish the absence of language, with no other scheme thereby exhibited, and partial failure presupposes a large shared background against which the failure is located.

Applied here, the objection holds that the two communities of §4 either understand one another, in which case they share a scheme and their disagreement is an ordinary disagreement within it, or they do not, in which case there is no evidence that the other party holds a position at all.

6.2 The Response

The response available to this paper concedes the objection and locates the argument outside its reach.

Davidson establishes a claim about meaning and belief. What follows is that the parties can state their positions to one another, that each can come to understand what the other holds, and that no barrier of principle prevents the rendering. The supposition of §4 grants all of this, since the supposition is that translation is perfect.

The residue identified in §4 concerns something the objection leaves untouched. Two parties may understand one another completely and hold values that stand in no relation yielding a determination. Understanding what an obligation to an ancestor amounts to is compatible with according it no weight against a valuation, and understanding what a carbon valuation amounts to is compatible with denying that the forest is the kind of thing to which valuations apply. Convergence of meaning and convergence of value are separate matters, and the objection establishes the first.

The position taken. Nothing in this paper requires that the parties inhabit mutually untranslatable schemes. The argument requires only that the values they hold, which they may articulate to one another without residue, stand in no antecedent relation of priority or equivalence that a determination could apply. The claim is accordingly compatible with the thesis that all languages are inter-translatable.

Turska (2025) stages the encounter between Davidson and the anthropological literature directly, and takes from Davidson the position that the aim of interpretation is understanding, with agreement a separate matter. The distinction is the one relied upon here.

6.3 The Consequence for the Paper’s Vocabulary

One consequence bears on how the paper speaks. The vocabulary of separate worlds, used in the literature surveyed in §5, invites the objection and is avoided below where a weaker formulation will serve. The formulation the paper defends is stated in §7 and it concerns relational structures and their influence on the articulation of values, which requires no thesis about the boundaries of schemes.

6.4 Findings and Residue

The objection from conceptual schemes tells against claims of untranslatability and does not tell against the claim advanced here, which concerns the relating of values, leaving the rendering of meanings untouched. The vocabulary of worlds is set aside in what follows for that reason.

§7 Language and Relational Structure

The question of §2 concerning the source of the residue is taken up here, and the answer is deliberately graded.

7.1 A Strong Claim and Its Difficulties

A strong claim is available, and this paper declines it. On that claim, a language carries a scheme of concepts, values, and relations, so that the loss of a language is the loss of the relations it carried, and linguistic diversity is valuable as the vehicle of relational diversity.

Something in the neighbourhood of the claim is well supported. Maffi (2005) documents the geographic co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity and argues that ecological knowledge is encoded in language. Evans (2010) and Harrison (2007) examine what is lost when languages cease to be spoken, including taxonomies, calendrical systems, and bodies of practical knowledge with no ready equivalent elsewhere.

Two difficulties attend the strong version.

The evidence for strong linguistic relativity is contested. Boroditsky (2001) reported effects of language upon the conceptualization of time, and January and Kako (2007) report a series of failures to replicate and conclude that the reported support is not established. The position that commands assent is the weaker one, on which language influences thought without determining it.

The strong version invites, second, the objection of §6 directly, since it requires that what a language carries be unavailable to speakers of another.

7.2 The Graded Thesis

Working thesis on language and relational structure. Linguistic and cultural communities embody partially distinct relational structures. Those structures influence how values are articulated, which values are treated as requiring no argument, how values are ranked when they conflict, and which values acquire institutional form. They neither determine nor exhaust the values a community holds.

Four features of the thesis deserve notice.

It is compatible with extensive overlap. Communities differing in language may hold most of their values in common, and the thesis claims nothing to the contrary.

It is compatible with internal disagreement. A single linguistic community may divide profoundly over values, and the thesis predicts this, since a community is a population standing within many structures.

It concerns articulation, priority, and institutionalization, leaving possession aside. What the thesis claims is that a value which is readily stated, treated as needing no defence, and carried into institutional form within one community may be statable within another only with effort, contested there, and absent from its institutions.

The thesis is compatible, fourth, with change. Relational structures are produced and reproduced by what parties do, and the thesis accordingly expects communities to converge and to diverge over time.

7.3 Language among Other Manifestations

The thesis has a consequence for the paper’s subject. If what generates heteromorphy is the plurality of relational structures, then language is one manifestation of that plurality and is neither its source nor its only expression. Professional formations, religious communities, regions, generations, and occupational practices generate relational structures of the same kind, and the difficulties this paper examines arise among them without any difference of language.

Multilingual democracy is accordingly treated below as a case in which relational plurality is unusually visible, since it is marked by an observable difference that institutions already register. The account offered extends to cases lacking that marker.

7.4 Findings and Residue

The strong claim about language and relations is not defended, and its empirical support is weaker than its rhetorical appeal. The graded thesis stated above is what the paper defends, and it locates the source of the residue in relational structures of which language is one manifestation. Whether the thesis can be operationalized is entered among the open questions.

§8 Relational Plurality and the Generation of Heteromorphic Values

8.1 The Reformulation

The framework stated in §1 treats values as generated within relations. Applied to the present subject, the reformulation runs as follows. A polity comprises parties standing within many relational structures, which have their own histories and their own practices of reproduction. Values are generated within those structures. A plurality of structures therefore yields a plurality of values differing in kind, and the difference requires no further explanation than the difference of the structures that produced them.

Figure 1. Two orderings of the same elements. On the received ordering, language is the locus of the difficulty and communication is the operation that addresses it. On the ordering proposed here, relational structures generate values, language is one manifestation of those structures, and governance addresses the relating of the values so generated. The figure records an ordering of concepts and asserts nothing about temporal sequence or causal magnitude.

8.2 The Consequence for Governance

If values are generated in this way, then a polity does not encounter a fixed stock of values held by fixed groups. It encounters a continuing production, in which the structures that generate values are themselves sustained and altered by what parties do, including by what the polity decides. Governance under these conditions bears upon the production, extending beyond its momentary output.

Two things follow that the sections below take up. A polity must relate values that were generated apart, since collective action requires determinations that the values do not jointly yield. A polity’s determinations enter, second, the structures that generated the values, so that what is decided bears upon what will subsequently be generated.

8.3 Findings and Residue

Relational plurality accounts for heteromorphy without further hypothesis, and language figures within the account as one manifestation among several. Governance so understood bears upon a continuing production in place of a fixed stock, which is the condition the following section addresses.

§9 Two Governance Functions Derived

The conditions stated generate two questions that a polity cannot avoid, and each is the subject of a companion paper. The derivation is given here so that the connection among the three papers rests on argument.

9.1 The First Function

A polity that must relate values generated within different structures requires that the structures be represented in the relating. A determination made without reference to a structure will nonetheless bear upon it, since the polity’s decisions enter the field within which that structure is reproduced.

The question of who holds standing to contribute is therefore unavoidable, and it is unavoidable in a specific form. What requires representation is a relational structure, since it is structures that generate the values at issue, and a population stands within many. A companion paper treats this question at length, and grounds standing in occupancy of a position within a structure whose reproduction is at stake (Huang, in preparation, b).

9.2 The Second Function

A polity that has secured representation must still relate the values so represented, since representation supplies the positions and leaves the determination outstanding. The relating is performed by some framework, whether the framework is acknowledged or operates as method, and the framework fixes relations of priority, equivalence, threshold, and admissibility among values that yield none of themselves.

The question of what makes such a framework legitimate is therefore unavoidable. A companion paper treats it, proposes a criterion under which a framework is assessed by whether it preserves the capacity of the relations it orders to generate a further determination of what it has fixed, and states the costs of that criterion (Huang, in preparation, c).

9.3 The Order of the Two

The two functions are distinguishable and they are not sequential. A framework for relating values is constructed by parties whose standing was settled by some arrangement, and the arrangement determining standing is itself expressed in terms that a framework supplies. The companion papers record this circularity, and the present paper takes from them the position that the two functions are analytically separable and institutionally entangled.

9.4 Findings and Residue

Two governance functions follow from the conditions stated: the determination of standing to contribute, and the determination of what makes a framework for relating values legitimate. Both are treated in companion papers, and their derivation here rests on the conditions of §8 in place of citation.

§10 Democracy under Relational Plurality

10.1 The Reading Proposed

The two functions of §9, taken together with the account of §8, suggest a reading of democratic government under these conditions.

Proposed reading. Democracy amid relational plurality may be understood as the continuing co-production of a shared future among parties standing within structures that generate values differing in kind, conducted so that the structures retain their capacity to generate. On this reading, the aggregation of preferences and the pursuit of mutual understanding are operations within democratic practice, and the practice itself consists in the relating of what plural structures produce.

10.2 The Nearest Existing Account

The reading stands close to an account already developed.

Tully (1995) treats constitutional practice amid deep diversity as a continuing intercultural conversation, governed by conventions of mutual recognition, consent, and continuity, in which accommodation proceeds without assimilation and in which cultures figure as overlapping, interacting, and internally contested in place of bounded units. The image of a constitution as an unfinished conversation among many voices, and the insistence that diversity is accommodated without being dissolved, are that account’s own.

A reader who knows this work will observe that the reading proposed above restates much of it. The observation would be correct, and two differences are offered as what the present account adds.

The first concerns the object. Tully’s conversation proceeds among peoples and cultures, and its subject is the recognition of their standing within a constitutional association. The account here concerns the relating of values that plural structures generate, which is a question about what a polity does after standing has been settled, and which §9 treats as a distinct function.

The second concerns the criterion. What the companion papers supply, and what a dialogical account does not, is a test applying to the frameworks a conversation produces: whether the framework leaves the relations it orders able to generate a further determination. A conversation may be impeccably conducted and issue in a settlement that forecloses, and the criterion identifies that case.

Whether these differences are sufficient to distinguish the accounts is left to the reader, and §13 records that they may not be. Should they prove insufficient, what is offered here is an extension of dialogical constitutionalism into the register of value conversion.

10.3 Adjacent Accounts

Three further positions bear on the reading.

Taylor (1994) develops deep diversity as a condition in which a polity accommodates several modes of belonging within one association, which is the condition the reading assumes.

Mouffe (2000) treats conflict as constitutive of political life and the expectation of consensus as a misconstrual, which supports the argument of §4 and cautions against reading the co-production proposed here as convergence.

Lijphart (1977) supplies the developed institutional answer for divided societies, in which segmental autonomy and elite accommodation permit a polity to function without its segments agreeing. The contrast is instructive. Consociational arrangements accommodate divisions treated as given, and the reading proposed here concerns the production of shared frameworks among structures that continue to generate. Whether the second is achievable where the first is what practice has settled upon is an open question.

Young (2000) develops a communicative account admitting modes of political expression that deliberative norms had excluded, and argues for representation organized around perspectives. The proposal that representation attach to structures in place of populations, entered in §9, stands close to that argument.

10.4 Findings and Residue

The reading proposed restates a substantial part of an existing account of constitutionalism amid diversity, and the two differences offered are the object of the relating and the criterion applying to its products. The reading is compatible with the position that conflict is constitutive, and it differs from consociational practice in concerning production where consociational practice concerns accommodation.

§11 The Model Assembled

11.1 The Circuit

The elements may be set out together.

Figure 2. The circuit described in §11, with the companion papers marked at the points they treat. Relational structures generate values differing in kind; standing to contribute is settled; the values are related by some framework; determinations issue in collective action; and action bears upon the structures from which the circuit began. The figure records relations among the elements and asserts no temporal sequence, since a polity is ordinarily engaged in several at once.

Relational structures, sustained by what parties within them do, generate values that differ in kind. A polity requiring collective action must relate those values, which raises the question of who contributes to the relating and the question of what makes the framework performing it legitimate. Determinations issue in action, and action enters the structures from which the values were generated, so that what is decided bears upon what will subsequently be produced.

11.2 The Closure of the Circuit

One feature of the circuit bears emphasis. Its last arc is the one that distinguishes the account from a treatment of plural values as a fixed condition to be managed. What a polity decides enters the reproduction of the structures that generated the values it decided among, so that a settlement is also an intervention in the conditions of subsequent settlement. A framework that forecloses a question therefore acts upon the structures that would have raised it again.

11.3 Findings and Residue

The circuit assembles the elements and marks where the companion papers treat them. Its closing arc records that determinations bear upon the structures generating what is subsequently to be determined, which is the feature that distinguishes the account from the management of a fixed plurality.

§12 Applications and Implications

The account bears on several settings, and this section indicates them without developing any.

Supranational associations conducting business in many languages face the conditions described in a visible form, and the arrangements they maintain for rendering and for representation address the difficulties of §3 while leaving the residue of §4 to be handled by whatever framework their assessment procedures embody.

Federal and plurinational states face the conditions where linguistic communities coincide with territorial units, and the consociational arrangements surveyed in §10 are the developed institutional response.

Governance involving indigenous communities faces them acutely, and the literature of §5 developed its account from such cases. The material of this paper suggests that the difficulty encountered there is continuous with difficulties encountered where no such community is party.

Governance assisted by automated translation faces a specific version. The account suggests that improvements in rendering address the difficulties of §3 without addressing the residue, and that a polity attributing its remaining disagreements to imperfect translation will misdiagnose them.

Settings marked by professional, disciplinary, or sectoral difference face the conditions without any difference of language, which §7 anticipated in treating language as one manifestation among several.

§13 The Limits of the Account

The account is now complete enough to be priced.

The reframing is inherited. As §5 concedes, the observation that conflicts of the instanced kind concern differing value-worlds and are not relieved by translation was reached in anthropology some decades ago. What is offered here is the extension of that observation to the multilingual democratic setting and the connection of it to two governance functions.

The proximity to dialogical constitutionalism may be fatal. §10 offers two differences from an existing account of constitutionalism amid diversity. A reader who judges those differences insufficient will conclude that the reading of democracy proposed here is an extension of that account, and the paper has no further answer.

The graded thesis is unoperationalized. §7 states what the paper defends and supplies no procedure for identifying the relational structures at issue in a given polity, for determining which values a structure generates, or for establishing that a given difference of articulation is attributable to a difference of structure.

No institutional design is offered. The two functions of §9 are derived and are not specified. What institutions discharge them, at what cost, and with what failure modes, is outside the paper.

The empirical premise of the opening is uncontrolled. The introduction observes that translation has improved markedly while disagreement has persisted, and offers an explanation. Many explanations are available for that conjunction, including several having nothing to do with values, and this paper establishes none of them.

The strong version of the language claim is abandoned without replacement. §7 declines the claim that languages carry relations such that language loss is relational loss. Readers who hold that claim on independent grounds will find the account weaker than they require, and the graded thesis supplies no argument for the protection of endangered languages that the strong claim would have supplied.

Two claims are entered against this list. The derivation in §9 connects three papers by argument in place of assertion, which retains its value independently of whether the reading of democracy is accepted. The survey, second, locates with some precision where two literatures that bear on one subject have failed to meet.

§14 Open Questions

This paper identifies a neglected connection. It does not complete a theory, and the questions below are held to be the more valuable part of what is offered.

The first group concerns the graded thesis.

Q1. How may a relational structure be identified independently of the values attributed to it? The thesis holds that structures influence the articulation of values, and an account that individuated structures by the values they generate would be circular.

Q2. What evidence would distinguish a difference of articulation from a difference of value? Two communities may state a shared value differently or hold different values, and the thesis requires the distinction while supplying no test for it.

Q3. How do relational structures change, and at what rate? The thesis expects convergence and divergence over time, and the mechanisms of each are unexamined here.

The second group concerns governance.

Q4. What institutions can discharge the representation of structures in place of populations? Existing arrangements represent territories, parties, and communities, and an arrangement representing relational structures has no established form.

Q5. Can consociational practice be made generative? §10 distinguishes accommodation of given divisions from production of shared frameworks, and whether an arrangement of the first kind can be brought to perform the second is open.

Q6. What follows for language policy? The account treats language as one manifestation of relational plurality, and what that implies for official status, for territoriality, and for the protection of endangered languages is undeveloped.

The third group concerns the connection this paper proposes, and the questions here are the sharpest because the claims are the strongest.

Q7. Does the anthropological literature on ontological conflict admit of institutional development, or does its refusal of finality preclude it? §5 records that the literature declines to specify arrangements, and whether that reflects a stage of development or a considered position is a question for its practitioners.

Q8. Is the residue of §4 continuous across cases, or does it differ in kind between the indigenous cases from which the literature developed and the ordinary cases of multilingual administration? The paper assumes continuity and does not establish it.

Q9. What distinguishes a polity that relates values well from one that relates them badly, where the criterion of the companion paper is unavailable for want of a procedure? The account leans on that criterion, and the criterion leans on an assessment nobody has shown how to make.

The last question is the one the account is directed toward, and it is placed last because everything above bears on it.

Q10. Under what conditions does a polity amid relational plurality retain the capacity of its constituent structures to generate, while still deciding what it must decide? A polity that decides nothing preserves every structure and governs nothing. A polity that decides by imposing one structure’s terms governs and extinguishes what it governed. The conditions under which a polity does neither are what an account of democracy under these conditions would have to supply, and this paper does not supply them.

A closing observation about the shape of the list. The questions of the first two groups could be pursued within existing disciplines, and several are being pursued there under other descriptions. The questions of the third group could not, since they concern a connection proposed here. A reader who finds the survey useful and the reading of democracy unpersuasive may take the first and leave the second, since the survey’s findings about where two literatures have failed to meet do not depend on the reading being correct.

A note on method. The paper argues by conceptual analysis and by survey, and it advances no empirical claim beyond the observation recorded in §1 that translation has improved while disagreement has persisted, which is offered as a motivation, carrying no evidential weight. The thought experiment of §4 is a device for isolating a residue by stipulation, and stipulation establishes nothing about the world.

A note on the survey. The anthropological literature treated in §5 is read here for one structural point, and its practitioners would regard the reading as thin. The claims attributed to it carry the weight of this paper’s principal concession and have been stated conservatively for that reason. The empirical literature on linguistic relativity treated in §7 is contested, and the account has been drawn so that nothing in the argument depends upon its resolution.

References

Apter, Emily (2013). Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London: Verso.

Asad, Talal (1986). The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology. In James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, 141–164. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Blaser, Mario (2013). Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology. Current Anthropology, 54(5), 547–568.

Boroditsky, Lera (2001). Does Language Shape Thought? Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22.

Cassin, Barbara, ed. (2014). Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Trans. ed. Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [French orig. 2004.]

Davidson, Donald (1974). On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 47, 5–20.

de la Cadena, Marisol (2015). Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

de la Cadena, Marisol, and Mario Blaser, eds. (2018). A World of Many Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Descola, Philippe (2013). Beyond Nature and Culture. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [French orig. 2005.]

Escobar, Arturo (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Evans, Nicholas (2010). Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Habermas, Jürgen (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Trans. William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Harrison, K. David (2007). When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, a). Interpretive Justice in Organizations: A Preliminary Discussion of Problems and Open Questions.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, b). Participation Justice in Generative Relational Being: Toward a Theory of Legitimate Participation in Relational Production and Reproduction.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, c). Interpretive Justice in Heteromorphic Value Conversion: Toward a Generative Relational Theory of Legitimate Value Conversion Nomos.

January, David, and Edward Kako (2007). Re-evaluating Evidence for the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: Response to Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104(2), 417–426.

Kymlicka, Will (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Latour, Bruno (2004). Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lijphart, Arend (1977). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Maffi, Luisa (2005). Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity. Annual Review of Anthropology, 34, 599–617.

May, Stephen (2015). The Problem with English(es) and Linguistic (In)justice. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 18(2), 131–148.

Meyer, John M. (2012). A Representative Politics of Nature? Bruno Latour on Collectives and Constitutions. Contemporary Political Theory, 11(3), 259–275.

Mouffe, Chantal (2000). The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.

Patten, Alan (2014). Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Quine, Willard Van Orman (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Shapiro, Ian (1999). Enough of Deliberation: Politics Is about Interests and Power. In Stephen Macedo, ed., Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, 28–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stengers, Isabelle (2005). The Cosmopolitical Proposal. In Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds., Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, 994–1003. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Taylor, Charles (1994). The Politics of Recognition. In Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tully, James (1995). Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Turska, Julia J. (2025). Not Agreement but Understanding: Davidson, Viveiros de Castro, and the Lived Experience View on Cross-Linguistic Disagreement. Asian Journal of Philosophy, 4(1), art. 56.

Van Parijs, Philippe (2011). Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2004). Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation. Tipití, 2(1), 3–22.

Young, Iris Marion (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

中文

摘要

诸多语言民主理论主要把语言多样当作一个沟通的、代表的、语言权利的，或承认的问题来处理。每一个致意一个真实的困难，而它们一起留下一样东西未被解释：多语言政体中的政治不一致不曾与近数十年所产生之翻译上极大的改善成比例地减少。本文审查一个可能的缘由。一个思想实验假设翻译是完美的并问什么会剩下，而剩下之物是那些在不同关系历史之内被生成、且没有任何句子的渲染使之可通约之诸价值的协调。那次综述让步这个结论是被确立的：关于本体论冲突的人类学工作已长篇论证这一种类的诸争议关乎诸世界而非诸词语，而翻译理论已论证渲染是一个构成价值的操作。那个文献大体搁置一旁之物是那个制度问题，以及那个特定的多语言情形。对着那些空缺本文推进一个分级的论题，即语言与文化诸共同体体现部分地不同的关系结构，它们影响诸价值如何被表述、被排定优先与被制度化，而不判定或穷尽它们，并从它推导一个在这样诸条件之下的政体所要求的两个治理功能。它迎击那个关于分离概念世界之概念不融贯的反对，并让步那个由此产生的民主图景立得接近一个既存的关于多样之中之宪政主义的说明。那个说明供出没有制度设计、它的中心论题作为一个假说被引入，而那些收尾的问题被持为所供出之物中更有价值的一半。

关键词： 多语言民主；关系复数性；异形价值；翻译；本体论冲突；语言正义；治理；生成性。

关于本文站位的一则附记。 这是一篇讨论文，而是三篇中的第三篇。它辨认一个结构、概览既存学术对它所作之物、标记每一个说明显得用尽之处，并提议一个工作的方向。它不完成一个理论。那次综述以一个让步的语域被进行，因为本文所提议的中心重构在一个语言的政治理论鲜少援引之人类学文献之内曾被抵达，而一篇未能如此说的论文会比一篇率先如此说的论文更少价值。那两篇姊妹论文在它们的结果被使用之处被提及，而那个论证被书写以致一个不曾见过它们的读者可跟随它。在一个此处作为开放被引入的主张事实上已被占据之处，或在一个来源被读错之处，改正被欢迎至 huangwanhong@serendip.ngo。

§1 引论

多语言政体维持精巧的诸安排以将它们的公共事务以若干语言渲染。欧洲联盟以它每一种官方语言采纳立法，每一版本同等作准。瑞士、加拿大、印度、比利时与南非各维持可比雄心的诸安排，而联合国以六种语言进行它的正式事务。这些安排是昂贵的、它们是被争议的，而它们停靠于一个已组织那个领域的命题：语言多样呈现一个接触的问题，而那个问题被翻译、被语言权利，并被诸语言共同体的代表所致意。

某样东西在过去二十年间发生于那个命题。翻译的品质与可得性已以一个大幅度改善，而将一个文本从一种语言渲染进另一种的代价已为许多语对朝零下落。倘若语言多样主要是一个接触问题，那个改变的政治后果应是可见的。多语言政体之内的不一致显得已持续，而在若干设定中已尖锐化，跨越同一个时期。

那个持续容许若干解释，而本文审查一个。一个思想实验使它精确。假设翻译是完美的，以致每一个以一种语言说出的句子被无损、即时且无代价地渲染进每一个其他语言。问那个困难会剩下什么。两个共同体于是可带完全的忠实相互陈述它们的诸立场：第一个持一片森林为一个被亏欠诸义务的祖先，第二个持它为一个被封存碳的储量，容许估值与交易。关于那个不一致没有任何东西被那个渲染的完美所缓解。每一方准确地理解另一方，而那个政体要就那片森林做什么的问题立于它所立之处。

那个思想实验分离出之物是一个翻译够不到的残余。那些方持有在不同的关系历史之内被生成的诸价值，对那片森林并对彼此，而如此被生成的诸价值在它们的语义上、在维系它们的诸实践上，以及在它们当作一个理由之物上不同。渲染诸句子确立语义对应。裁定一个政体要做什么要求某样进一步之物，那是把那些价值以一个许可一个裁定的条件相互关联。本文取那第二个操作为它的主题，并问一个政体在它必须关联的诸价值被分开生成时做什么。

一则告诫紧接在那个定框之后属于此处，因为它的不谨慎版本是假的。不同语言的诸说者不因此持有不同的诸价值，而一种语言的诸说者深刻地不一致。语言共同体与价值之间的关系比那些鲜明情形所暗示的更松，而§7陈述本文实际辩护的那个分级论题，在其之上语言与文化诸共同体体现部分地不同的关系结构，它们影响诸价值如何被表述、被排定优先与被制度化，而不判定或穷尽它们。

五个工作之体关乎那个问题。语言的政治理论已审查一个政体欠它若干语言之诸说者什么，把语言当作一个其分配提起公平诸问题的沟通资源（范·帕里斯 2011；帕滕 2014；金里卡 1995）。审议理论已把正当性奠基于公民之间的沟通条件（哈贝马斯 1996）。关于本体论冲突的人类学工作已论证上面所例示之种类的诸争议关乎不同的诸世界，而被误描为对一个世界的不同视角（布拉泽 2013；德拉卡德纳 2015；埃斯科瓦尔 2018；维韦罗斯·德·卡斯特罗 2004）。翻译理论已论证渲染是一个构成价值的操作，不容许中立的施行（卡桑 2014；阿普特 2013；阿萨德 1986）。宪法理论最终已审查一个政体如何可容纳深度多样而不同化它（塔利 1995）。这些文献安定这个主题的一个可观比例，而本文的一个目的是记录多少；下面的综述相应地通过先让步、而后定位剩下之物来进行。

此处所供出的说明在一个作者已在别处铺陈的框架之内被发展，而它可被以一句话陈述：

生成性关系存在。 一个关于主体、意义、价值、创造与规范性如何通过生成性关系过程共同涌现的理论。

那个框架的三个特征关乎当下主题。诸价值被当作在诸关系之内被生成，以致关系历史的一个复数性理所当然地产出诸价值的一个复数性。诸关系被当作生成性的，即一个处于运作秩序中的关系产生意义的、价值的，以及那个关系本身所要求之物的诸进一步裁定。那个框架第三携带一个支配它诸主张如何被推进的方法论承诺，它的基调是历史辩证法，以致诸命题作为在一个历史框架内可修订的被引入、知识与实践的有限被承认为一个常在状况，而哲学论证在那个主题容许它之处被连到可操作的表述。一篇在那个承诺之下被书写的论文陈述它的诸主张以致它们可被放弃。

被应用于此处，这些特征暗示语言是若干关系复数性显现之中的一个，而一个多语言政体所面对的困难是一个更广状况的一个情形。§8到§9发展那个暗示并从它推导一个在这样诸条件之下的政体所要求的两个治理功能。

这是一篇讨论文，而它的角色相应地有限。它辨认一个结构、概览既存学术对它所作之物、标记每一个说明显得用尽之处，并提议一个工作的方向；它不完成一个理论，而它的若干中心命题作为等待审查的假说被引入。三个事项躺在这项承担之外。本文提议没有制度设计，而§13解释为什么无一从那个说明随之而来。它就任何特定法域的语言政策不取立场。它第三把多语言制度的经验研究搁置一旁，那会要求本文不采用的诸方法。

四个贡献被供出，以不同程度的信心被主张。第一个是一次绘图，定位这个领域中哪些问题显得被安定、哪些显得开放，而保有它的价值，独立于下面诸提议是否被接受。第二个是§7的分级论题，它占据语言判定价值的主张与语言对价值透明的主张之间的空间。第三个是§9中从所陈述之诸条件对两个治理功能的推导，它以论证替代交叉引用把本文连到它的诸姊妹论文。第四个是一个在这些条件之下的民主读法，在§10带一个它立得接近一个既存说明的承认而被推进。在§14所记下的诸问题被持为所供出之物中更有价值的一半。

§2 范围与方法

2.1 那个容纳手法

三个问题组织那次讨论，而材料通过履行它们之一赢得它的位置：

（i）那个残余。 一旦接触、渲染与代表的诸问题被假设为已解决，多语言治理的困难剩下什么。

（ii）那个来源。 什么说明那个残余，而语言共同体与一个共同体所持有之诸价值之间成立什么关系。

（iii）那个回应。 一个面对那个残余的政体被要求做什么，而那个要求把民主弄成什么。

2.2 那个让步的语域

一个其诸组件在个别上不具原创性的理论仍可通过它连接它们的方式作出贡献，而那个连接仅在那些组件被正确地归属之处变得可见。本文的论证是建筑性的，而一个建筑性的论证被任何采过它自己石料的主张所削弱。在一个可能已在此处被推进的主张显得被占据之处，相关的节如此说并命名那个占据者。两节大体由这样的诸让步组成，而它们出于那个缘由被置于那个建构性材料之前。

2.3 同两篇姊妹论文的关系

那个论证在§9抵达两个诸姊妹论文长篇处理的治理功能。那些功能在此从本文所铺陈的诸条件被推导，以致一个读者可在不曾见过那些姊妹论文的情况下跟随那个论证，而那些姊妹论文在它们的结果被使用之处被援引。那个推导是那个要点：两篇被分开书写的论文被显示为回答一个第三组条件所生成的诸问题。

2.4 关于来源的一则附记

那次综述汲取政治理论、语言哲学、社会与文化人类学、社会语言学与翻译研究。这些场域不均地相互援引，而本文的中心观察在它们之一之内于数十年前被抵达而不曾行进到其他之中。在那已发生之处它被记录，因为一个发现之未能行进本身对一个主题的状态是有教益的。

§3 既存诸视角及它们所致意的诸问题

关于多语言民主的每一个既定视角辨认一个真实的困难并致意它。本节按每一个把自己当作解决之问题铺陈它们，并在每一情形中记录那个视角所搁置之物。

3.1 平等参与

那个自由主义处理把那个困难当作一个接触的。一个无法跟随一个立法机关之议事、读一部制定法，或以一种他们掌握的语言致意一个官员的公民被一个同他们作为一个公民之站位毫无关系的障碍排除于政治生活之外。那些补救是翻译、口译、多语言发布，以及以多于一种语言进行官方事务。

那个视角假定那个障碍一旦被移除，政治不一致是寻常种类的不一致，在如今相互理解的诸公民之间进行。

3.2 相互理解

那个审议处理把那个困难当作一个沟通触及的。哈贝马斯（1996）把诸规范的正当性奠基于它们可通过那些受制于它们者之间的话语被采纳所处的诸条件，而一个其成员无法相互致意的政体达不到那些条件。翻译在这个说明上服务理解，而理解服务正当性。

那个视角假定那些话语条件一旦被确保，许可那些方抵达一致或抵达对它们不一致的一个被说理的承认。

3.3 语言正义

那个分配处理把那个困难当作一个不平等负担的。范·帕里斯（2011）审查一个共享语言对那些必须习得它者的诸后果、论证一门通用语的传播不均地分配诸代价与诸利益，并考量语言诸群体之间的公平所要求之物。那个处理是谨慎的而它在它对语言的设想上明确地经济：语言作为一个其分配提起正义诸问题的沟通资源出场。

梅（2015）施加那个关乎当下这篇论文的反对，主张一个被限于它沟通触及的语言说明略过它的象征与构成身份的诸功能。那个反对已被它的对象争议，而它恰恰辨认本文所接手的那个维度。

3.4 承认

那个多元文化处理把那个困难当作一个站位的。金里卡（1995）把少数群体权利奠基于一个社会文化在供出一个诸选择于其内有意义之语境时所扮演的角色，而泰勒（1994）论证误认施加一个区别于错误分配的损害。语言在这些说明上携带身份，而它的公共地位相应地是一个正义的事项。

那个视角假定承认一旦被延展，许可那些被承认者如其所是地参与。承认就一个其成员被承认为不同之政体的协调所做之物是一个进一步的问题。

3.5 那个共同假定

视角	所致意的问题	主要补救	它所搁置之物
平等参与	被语言障碍的排除	翻译与多语言供给	理解是否解决那个不一致
审议	公民之间的沟通触及	话语的诸条件	话语条件是否安定价值冲突
语言正义	一个共同语言的不均负担	权利、属地性、补偿	语言的象征与承载价值的诸功能
承认	语言诸共同体的站位	公共地位与少数群体权利	被承认者之间的协调

那些视角共享一个§4的思想实验被设计去检验的假定。每一个把语言当作那个困难的所在，以致一个已致意接触、负担与站位的政体已致意语言多样所呈现之物。无一就它所命名的困难弄错。那个问题是它们所命名的诸困难是否穷尽这个主题。

3.6 诸发现与残余

四个视角致意四个真实的困难并为每一个供出诸补救。全部四个把那个困难定位在语言中，并把一个政体的协调当作一个进一步的事项，在语言诸障碍被移除后被进行。它们的诸补救之后是否有任何有后果之物幸存是随之一节的问题。

§4 完美翻译之后的残余

4.1 那个假设

假设翻译是完美的。任何语言中的每一个话语被无意义损失、即时、无代价，并带那个渲染之忠实被所有方承认地渲染进每一个其他语言。§3的诸假定因而以那个可得的最强形式被满足：没有公民被一个语言的障碍排除、没有方承担习得一门共同语言的负担，而每一个共同体以它自己的诸术语致意那个政体。

问剩下什么。

4.2 那个情形

一个政体必须裁定一片森林的处置。它之内的一个共同体持那片森林为一个祖先，立于一个它成员不曾选择且无法消解的义务关系，以致砍伐的问题不是一个关于一个资源的问题。另一个持那片森林为一个被封存碳的储量，被用于估值这样诸储量的诸方法正确地估值，以致砍伐的问题是一个关于一个比率的问题。

在那个假设之下，每一个共同体陈述它的立场而另一个准确地接收它。第一个理解一个碳储量是什么以及估值它涉及什么。第二个理解立于一个对一个祖先之义务关系等于什么。两者都不困惑，而没有进一步的渲染可得以被施行。

那个政体必须作出的裁定立于它所立之处。所要求之物是一个关于那个政体要做什么的决定，而它面前的诸立场以没有产出一个决定的方式被关联。

4.3 那个残余被分离

关于那个残余的工作假说。 经受住完美翻译的困难关乎把诸价值以许可一个裁定的条件相互关联。渲染确立每一方正在说什么。治理进一步要求那些方正在说之物被带入优先的、等值的、门槛的，或可容许性的诸关系，而没有任何对诸句子的操作供出那些关系。

4.4 那个论证的站位

那个思想实验是一个呈现装置而它所抵达的结论被广泛地持有。三个归属被亏欠。

关于不一致之政治维度的工作长久地持有，在那个冲突关乎利益、权力，或诸价值之处，被改善的沟通把冲突留得实质上完整。夏皮罗（1999）对着诸审议说明施加这个，而墨菲（2000）持冲突为那个政治的构成性之物，并把一致的期待当作对它的一个误解。

关于本体论冲突的人类学工作已经一条不同的路线抵达同一个结论，而§5长篇处理它。

翻译理论已确立渲染从不是一个中立的操作，以致完美翻译的假设本身是可质疑的。蒯因（1960）论证指称被翻译可得的证据所欠决定。卡桑（2014）把不可翻译者当作诸概念网络跨诸语言未能叠合之方式的标志。阿普特（2013）施加假定无摩擦等值的政治后果，而阿萨德（1986）记录人类学翻译被进行于其间之诸语言的不对称。

那个假设所贡献之物相应地是适度的。它以一个凭规定分离出那个残余的形式铺陈那个结论，而它在民主治理的设定中如此做，在那里那个结论比在人类学与翻译研究中被更少地抽出。

4.5 诸发现与残余

完美翻译留下一个残余，而那个残余关乎诸价值的关联，把诸句子的渲染搁置一旁。那个结论在三个文献中被确立，而在民主设定中分离出它的那个规定性定框是本文在此的贡献。

§5 本体论冲突作为一个既定研究对象

本文最大的让步被亏欠于一个于数十年前抵达它中心观察的文献。

5.1 那个既定立场

布拉泽（2013）把§4中所例示种类的诸冲突当作不同实在之间的诸冲突，并论证把它们描述为对一个单一世界的文化视角之差异事先从属一方。他的中心情形关乎一头虎鲸，一方把它辨认为一头海洋生物学有旨趣的鲸，而另一方把它辨认为一位归返的酋长，而那个情形的结构是那片森林的结构。

德拉卡德纳（2015）审查安第斯大地存在进入政治争议，并论证文化这个范畴对那里所发生之物是不恰当的，因为成问题之物是诸世界之间的一个对抗。埃斯科瓦尔（2018）发展多元宇宙的语汇，一个其中许多世界被容纳的世界，明确地对立于一个只容许一个的本体论。德斯科拉（2013）供出一个诸集体组成人类与非人类之间关系所凭之诸图式的系统类型学。

维韦罗斯·德·卡斯特罗（2004）供出最接近§4之论证的处理。跨越这样诸划分的沟通被刻画为受控歧义，在其之上那个困难不是那些方未能找到一个共同指称物，而是每一方假定另一方正在指称它们自己所指称之物。以那个形式被陈述，§4的要点在本文之前二十年就被作出。

5.2 那个让步被陈述

一个关系说明可能希望推进的两个命题被这个文献占据。所例示种类的诸争议关乎不同的诸世界、而被误描为对一个世界的不同看法这个命题，是它的奠基承诺。这样诸争议不被改善的翻译所缓解、而一个跨它们被宣告的等值从属那个较弱的一方这个命题，被在它之内直接陈述。

5.3 那个残余

两样东西显得剩下。

那个文献在诸制度上是稀薄的。斯唐热（2005）供出一个围绕外交的诸形象并围绕一致的刻意放缓被组织的程序提议，并陈述那个提议不是一个纲领。拉图尔（2004）供出那个发达的制度处理，为一个通过被陈述之诸程序被组装的集体提议一部宪法，而迈耶（2012）论证那个提议在它会不得不生成正当诸解决之点保持未被充分规定。非共有的语汇，在德拉卡德纳与布拉泽（2018）中被发展，描述一个其天职明确地不是抵达终局性的协商基础。一个必须在一个日期前裁定一片森林处置的政体被留下很少。

那个文献在语言上大体沉默。它的诸情形关乎原住民宇宙政治、设计与诸集体的组成，而一个以若干官方语言进行事务之政体的特定多语言状况不是它的主题。那个文献与§3中所概览之语言的政治理论之间的连接显得不曾被作出。

5.4 诸发现与残余

把价值冲突重构为诸世界之间的冲突是被确立的，而翻译不缓解它这个观察与它一起被确立。那个残余在于那个制度问题与那个多语言情形，而那两个会共同致意它们的文献不曾被带到一起。

§6 来自概念图式的反对

一个反对立于任何谈论分离诸世界的说明，而它严重到足以在那个建构性论证进行之前被迎击。

6.1 那个反对

戴维森（1974）论证一个同我们自己的根本不同、并不可翻译进它之概念图式的概念是不融贯的。把某物辨认为一种语言、或为思想、或为信念，已预设实质的可翻译性，因为解释通过把一个大体为真且大体一致的诸信念之集归于那个被解释者而进行。某个活动抵抗以我们的语言被解释的证据同等地是那个活动不是言语的证据。翻译的完全失败会确立语言的缺席，而没有其他图式因此被展示，而部分失败预设一个大的共享背景，那个失败对着它被定位。

被应用于此处，那个反对主张§4的两个共同体要么相互理解，在那个情形中它们共享一个图式而它们的不一致是它之内的一个寻常不一致，要么它们不，在那个情形中根本没有证据显示另一方持有一个立场。

6.2 那个回应

本文可得的回应让步那个反对并把那个论证定位在它的够到之外。

戴维森确立一个关于意义与信念的主张。随之而来之物是那些方能相互陈述它们的诸立场、每一方能前来理解另一方所持之物，而没有原则的障碍阻止那个渲染。§4的假设授予所有这一切，因为那个假设是翻译是完美的。

§4中所辨认的残余关乎某样那个反对留下未触动之物。两个方可完全地相互理解而持有立于没有产出一个裁定之关系的诸价值。理解一个对一个祖先之义务等于什么与给它对着一个估值没有分量相容，而理解一个碳估值等于什么与否认那片森林是估值所适用之种类的东西相容。意义的趋同与价值的趋同是分开的事项，而那个反对确立那第一个。

所取的立场。 本文中没有任何东西要求那些方栖居相互不可翻译的诸图式。那个论证仅要求它们所持有、它们可无残余地相互表述的诸价值，立于没有一个裁定可适用的优先或等值之在先关系。那个主张相应地与一切语言相互可翻译的论题相容。

图尔斯卡（2025）直接上演戴维森与那个人类学文献之间的相遇，并从戴维森取那个立场，即解释的目的是理解，而一致是一个分开的事项。那个区分是此处所依赖的一个。

6.3 那个对本文语汇的后果

一个后果关乎本文如何说话。分离诸世界的语汇，在§5中所概览的文献中被使用，招来那个反对，而在下面一个较弱的表述会服务之处被避免。本文所辩护的表述在§7被陈述，而它关乎关系结构及它们对诸价值之表述的影响，那要求没有关于诸图式之边界的论题。

6.4 诸发现与残余

来自概念图式的反对逆着不可翻译性的诸主张说话，而不逆着此处所推进的主张说话，那个主张关乎诸价值的关联，把诸意义的渲染留下未触动。诸世界的语汇在随之而来之物中出于那个缘由被搁置一旁。

§7 语言与关系结构

§2中关乎那个残余之来源的问题在此被接手，而那个答案被刻意地分级。

7.1 一个强主张及其诸困难

一个强主张可得，而本文谢绝它。在那个主张上，一门语言携带一个概念、价值与关系的图式，以致一门语言的失去是它所携带之诸关系的失去，而语言多样作为关系多样的载体有价值。

那个主张近旁的某样东西被良好支持。马菲（2005）记录语言与生物多样的地理共现并论证生态知识被编码在语言中。埃文斯（2010）与哈里森（2007）审查当诸语言停止被说时什么被失去，包括诸分类法、历法诸系统，以及在别处没有现成对等物的诸实践知识之体。

两个困难贴附那个强版本。

支持强语言相对论的证据是被争议的。博罗迪茨基（2001）报告语言对时间之概念化的诸效果，而詹纽厄里与卡科（2007）报告一系列复制的失败并断定所报告的支持不被确立。命令赞同的立场是那个较弱的一个，在其之上语言影响思想而不判定它。

那个强版本第二直接招来§6的反对，因为它要求一门语言所携带之物对另一门语言的诸说者不可得。

7.2 那个分级论题

关于语言与关系结构的工作论题。 语言与文化诸共同体体现部分地不同的关系结构。那些结构影响诸价值如何被表述、哪些价值被当作要求没有论证、诸价值在它们冲突时如何被排名，以及哪些价值获得制度形式。它们既不判定也不穷尽一个共同体所持有的诸价值。

那个论题的四个特征配得上注意。

它与广泛的交叠相容。在语言上不同的诸共同体可持有它们大部分价值为共同，而那个论题主张没有相反之物。

它与内部不一致相容。一个单一的语言共同体可就诸价值深刻地分裂，而那个论题预测这个，因为一个共同体是一个立于许多结构之内的人口。

它关乎表述、优先与制度化，把持有搁置一旁。那个论题所主张之物是一个在一个共同体之内被轻易陈述、被当作不需要辩护，并被携带进制度形式的价值，可能在另一个之内仅带努力可陈述、在那里被争议，而从它的诸制度缺席。

那个论题第四与改变相容。关系结构被诸方所做之物生产与再生产，而那个论题相应地预期诸共同体随时间趋同与分歧。

7.3 语言在其他诸显现之中

那个论题对本文的主题有一个后果。倘若生成异形性之物是关系结构的复数性，那么语言是那个复数性的一个显现，而既非它的来源也非它唯一的表达。专业诸形构、宗教诸共同体、诸地区、诸世代与职业诸实践生成同一种类的关系结构，而本文所审查的诸困难在它们之间生起而没有任何语言的差异。

多语言民主相应地在下面被当作一个其中关系复数性不寻常地可见的情形，因为它被一个诸制度已经登记的可观察差异所标记。所供出的说明延伸到缺乏那个标记的诸情形。

7.4 诸发现与残余

关于语言与关系的强主张不被辩护，而它的经验支持比它的修辞吸引力更弱。上面所陈述的分级论题是本文所辩护之物，而它把那个残余的来源定位在语言是其一个显现的关系结构中。那个论题能否被操作化被引入诸开放问题之中。

§8 关系复数性与异形价值的生成

8.1 那个重述

§1中所陈述的框架把诸价值当作在诸关系之内被生成。被应用于当下主题，那个重述如下进行。一个政体包含立于许多关系结构之内的诸方，它们有它们自己的诸历史与它们自己的再生产诸实践。诸价值在那些结构之内被生成。一个结构的复数性因而产出一个种类上不同之诸价值的复数性，而那个差异要求没有比生产它们之诸结构的差异更进一步的解释。

图1。 同一诸要素的两个排序。在那个既得排序上，语言是那个困难的所在而沟通是致意它的操作。在此处所提议的排序上，关系结构生成诸价值、语言是那些结构的一个显现，而治理致意如此被生成之诸价值的关联。那个图记录一个诸概念的排序并就时间序列或因果量级不断言任何东西。

8.2 那个对治理的后果

倘若诸价值以这种方式被生成，那么一个政体不遇到一个被固定诸群体所持有的固定价值储量。它遇到一个持续的生产，其中生成诸价值的那些结构本身被诸方所做之物、包括被那个政体所裁定之物所维系与改变。治理在这些条件之下关系着那个生产，延伸超出它的一时输出。

两样东西随之而来，下面诸节接手它们。一个政体必须关联被分开生成的诸价值，因为集体行动要求那些价值不共同产出的诸裁定。一个政体的诸裁定第二进入生成那些价值的诸结构，以致被裁定之物关系着什么将随后被生成。

8.3 诸发现与残余

关系复数性说明异形性而无进一步的假说，而语言在那个说明之内作为若干之中的一个显现出场。如此被理解的治理关系着一个持续的生产以替代一个固定的储量，那是随之一节所致意的状况。

§9 两个被推导的治理功能

所陈述的诸条件生成两个一个政体无法避免的问题，而每一个是一篇姊妹论文的主题。那个推导在此被给出以致那三篇论文之间的连接停靠于论证。

9.1 那第一个功能

一个必须关联在不同结构之内被生成之诸价值的政体要求那些结构在那个关联中被代表。一个在不参照一个结构的情况下所作的裁定尽管如此将关系着它，因为那个政体的诸决定进入那个结构被再生产于其内的场域。

谁持有站位去作出贡献的问题因而是无法避免的，而它以一个特定形式无法避免。要求代表之物是一个关系结构，因为是诸结构生成成问题的诸价值，而一个人口立于许多之内。一篇姊妹论文长篇处理这个问题，并把站位奠基于对一个其再生产处于利害之中的结构内之一个位置的占据（黄，编写中，b）。

9.2 那第二个功能

一个已确保代表的政体仍必须关联如此被代表的诸价值，因为代表供出那些位置而把那个裁定留下未了。那个关联被某个框架施行，无论那个框架被承认还是作为方法运作，而那个框架在自己产出无一之诸价值之间固定优先、等值、门槛与可容许性的诸关系。

什么使这样一个框架正当的问题因而是无法避免的。一篇姊妹论文处理它、提议一个判据，在其之下一个框架由它是否保全它所排序之诸关系产生一个对它已固定之物之进一步裁定的能力被评估，并陈述那个判据的诸代价（黄，编写中，c）。

9.3 那两个的次序

那两个功能是可区分的而它们不是顺序的。一个关联诸价值的框架被诸方所建构，它们的站位被某个安排所安定，而那个判定站位的安排本身被以一个框架所供出的诸术语表达。那些姊妹论文记录这个循环性，而当下这篇论文从它们取那个立场，即那两个功能是分析上可分开且制度上纠缠的。

9.4 诸发现与残余

两个治理功能从所陈述的诸条件随之而来：站位以作出贡献的判定，以及什么使一个关联诸价值之框架正当的判定。两者都在诸姊妹论文中被处理，而它们在此的推导停靠于§8的诸条件以替代引用。

§10 关系复数性之下的民主

10.1 所提议的读法

§9的两个功能，同§8的说明一起来看，暗示一个在这些条件之下的民主政府读法。

所提议的读法。 关系复数性之中的民主可被理解为一个共享未来在立于生成种类上不同之诸价值之诸结构内之诸方之间的持续共同生产，被进行以致那些结构保有它们的生成能力。在这个读法上，诸偏好的聚合与相互理解的追求是民主实践之内的诸操作，而那个实践本身在于诸复数结构所生产之物的关联。

10.2 那个最近的既存说明

那个读法立得接近一个已经被发展的说明。

塔利（1995）把深度多样之中的宪法实践当作一个持续的跨文化对话，被相互承认、同意与延续的诸惯例所支配，其中容纳在没有同化的情况下进行，而其中诸文化作为交叠的、互动的与内部被争议的、以替代有界诸单位出场。一部宪法作为一个在许多声音之间的未完成对话这个意象，以及多样在没有被消解的情况下被容纳这个坚持，是那个说明自己的。

一个知道这个作品的读者会注意到上面所提议的读法重述它的甚多。那个观察会是正确的，而两个差别作为当下说明所添加之物被供出。

第一个关乎那个对象。塔利的对话在诸民族与诸文化之间进行，而它的主题是它们在一个宪法性联合之内之站位的承认。此处的说明关乎诸复数结构所生成之诸价值的关联，那是一个关于一个政体在站位已被安定之后做什么的问题，而§9把它当作一个独特的功能处理。

第二个关乎那个判据。那些姊妹论文所供出、而一个对话式说明所不供出之物，是一个适用于一个对话所产生之诸框架的检验：那个框架是否把它所排序的诸关系留得能够产生一个进一步裁定。一个对话可被无可指摘地进行而发端于一个封锁的安定，而那个判据辨认那个情形。

这些差别是否足以区分那些说明被留给那个读者，而§13记录它们可能不足。倘若它们被证明不足，此处所供出之物是一个对话式宪政主义向价值转换之语域的一个延伸。

10.3 诸相邻说明

三个进一步的立场关乎那个读法。

泰勒（1994）把深度多样发展为一个其中一个政体在一个联合之内容纳若干归属模式的状况，那是那个读法所假定的状况。

墨菲（2000）把冲突当作政治生活的构成性之物并把一致的期待当作一个误解，那支持§4的论证并告诫勿把此处所提议的共同生产读为趋同。

利普哈特（1977）为分裂社会供出那个发达的制度回答，其中分块自治与精英容纳许可一个政体在它诸分块不一致的情况下运转。那个对照是有教益的。协和式诸安排容纳被当作给定的诸划分，而此处所提议的读法关乎在继续生成之诸结构之间共享框架的生产。那第二个是否在那第一个是实践已安定之物之处可达成是一个开放的问题。

扬（2000）发展一个接纳诸审议规范曾排除之政治表达模式的沟通说明，并为围绕诸视角被组织的代表论证。代表附着于诸结构以替代诸人口这个提议，在§9被引入，立得接近那个论证。

10.4 诸发现与残余

所提议的读法重述一个既存的关于多样之中之宪政主义说明的一个实质部分，而所供出的两个差别是那个关联的对象与适用于它诸产物的判据。那个读法与冲突是构成性的立场相容，而它区别于协和式实践，在于关乎生产之处协和式实践关乎容纳。

§11 那个模型被组装

11.1 那个回路

那些要素可被一起铺陈。

图2。 §11中所描述的回路，带诸姊妹论文在它们所处理之点被标记。关系结构生成种类上不同的诸价值；站位以作出贡献被安定；那些价值被某个框架关联；诸裁定发端于集体行动；而行动关系着那个回路从中开始的诸结构。那个图记录诸要素之间的诸关系并不断言时间序列，因为一个政体通常一次从事若干。

关系结构，被它们之内诸方所做之物所维系，生成种类上不同的诸价值。一个要求集体行动的政体必须关联那些价值，那提起谁对那个关联作出贡献的问题与什么使那个施行它的框架正当的问题。诸裁定发端于行动，而行动进入那些价值从中被生成的诸结构，以致被裁定之物关系着什么将随后被生产。

11.2 那个回路的闭合

那个回路的一个特征承载强调。它的最后一段弧是那个把那个说明同一个把诸复数价值当作一个待被管理之固定状况的处理区分开来的。一个政体所裁定之物进入生成它裁定于其间之诸价值的那些结构的再生产，以致一个安定也是一个对随后安定之诸条件的干预。一个封锁一个问题的框架因而作用于那些会再次提起它的结构。

11.3 诸发现与残余

那个回路组装那些要素并标记诸姊妹论文在何处处理它们。它的收尾弧记录诸裁定关系着那些生成什么将随后被裁定之诸结构，那是把那个说明同一个固定复数性的管理区分开来的特征。

§12 应用与蕴含

那个说明关乎若干设定，而本节指示它们而不发展任何一个。

以许多语言进行事务的超国家联合以一个可见的形式面对所描述的诸条件，而它们为渲染与为代表所维持的诸安排致意§3的诸困难，同时把§4的残余留给它们评估诸程序所体现的无论什么框架去处理。

联邦与多民族国家在语言诸共同体与领土诸单位重合之处面对那些条件，而§10中所概览的协和式诸安排是那个发达的制度回应。

涉及原住民诸共同体的治理尖锐地面对它们，而§5的文献从这样诸情形发展它的说明。本文的材料暗示在那里所遇到的困难与在没有这样一个共同体为方之处所遇到的诸困难是连续的。

被自动翻译辅助的治理面对一个特定版本。那个说明暗示渲染上的诸改善致意§3的诸困难而不致意那个残余，而一个把它剩余诸不一致归于不完美翻译的政体将误诊它们。

被专业的、学科的，或行业的差异所标记的诸设定在没有任何语言差异的情况下面对那些条件，那是§7在把语言当作若干之中的一个显现时所预期的。

§13 该说明的界限

那个说明现在完整到足以被定价。

那个重构是被继承的。 如§5所让步，所例示种类的诸冲突关乎不同的价值世界、并不被翻译所缓解这个观察于数十年前在人类学中被抵达。此处所供出之物是那个观察向多语言民主设定的延伸，以及它对两个治理功能的连接。

同对话式宪政主义的邻近可能是致命的。 §10供出两个同一个既存的关于多样之中之宪政主义说明的差别。一个判断那些差别不足的读者会断定此处所提议的民主读法是那个说明的一个延伸，而本文没有进一步的答案。

那个分级论题未被操作化。 §7陈述本文所辩护之物并供出没有辨认一个给定政体中成问题之关系结构、判定一个结构生成哪些价值，或确立一个给定的表述差异可归于一个结构差异的程序。

没有制度设计被供出。 §9的两个功能被推导而不被规定。什么制度履行它们、以什么代价，并带什么失败模式，在本文之外。

那个开篇的经验前提是不受控的。 那个引论观察翻译已显著地改善而不一致已持续，并供出一个解释。许多解释对那个合取可得，包括若干同诸价值毫无关系的，而本文确立它们无一。

那个语言主张的强版本被放弃而无替换。 §7谢绝那个语言携带诸关系以致语言失去是关系失去的主张。在独立根据上持有那个主张的诸读者会发现那个说明比他们所要求的更弱，而那个分级论题供出没有那个强主张本会供出的为濒危语言之保护的论证。

两个主张被对着这个清单引入。§9中的推导以论证替代断言连接三篇论文，那保有它的价值，独立于那个民主读法是否被接受。那次综述其次以某种精确定位两个关乎一个主题的文献在何处未能相遇。

§14 开放的问题

本文辨认一个被忽视的连接。它不完成一个理论，而下面的诸问题被持为所供出之物中更有价值的部分。

那第一组关乎那个分级论题。

Q1。 一个关系结构如何可被独立于归于它的诸价值而被辨认？那个论题持诸结构影响诸价值的表述，而一个由诸结构所生成之价值个体化它们的说明会是循环的。

Q2。 什么证据会把一个表述差异同一个价值差异区分开来？两个共同体可不同地陈述一个共享价值，或持有不同的诸价值，而那个论题要求那个区分，同时供出没有它的检验。

Q3。 关系结构如何改变，而以什么比率？那个论题预期随时间的趋同与分歧，而每一个的诸机制在此未被审查。

那第二组关乎治理。

Q4。 什么制度能履行诸结构以替代诸人口的代表？既存诸安排代表诸领土、诸党派与诸共同体，而一个代表关系结构的安排没有既定的形式。

Q5。 协和式实践能被弄得生成性吗？§10把给定诸划分的容纳同共享框架的生产区分开来，而一个第一种类的安排是否能被带到履行那第二个是开放的。

Q6。 什么为语言政策随之而来？那个说明把语言当作关系复数性的一个显现，而那对官方地位、对属地性，以及对濒危语言的保护所蕴含之物未被发展。

那第三组关乎本文所提议的连接，而诸问题在此是最尖锐的，因为那些主张是最强的。

Q7。 关于本体论冲突的人类学文献容许制度发展，还是它对终局性的拒绝阻止它？§5记录那个文献谢绝规定诸安排，而那是否反映一个发展的阶段还是一个深思熟虑的立场是一个为它诸从业者的问题。

Q8。 §4的残余跨诸情形是连续的，还是它在那个文献从中发展之原住民诸情形与多语言行政的寻常诸情形之间在种类上不同？本文假定连续性而不确立它。

Q9。 什么把一个好好关联诸价值的政体同一个糟糕地关联它们的区分开来，在那个姊妹论文的判据因缺一个程序而不可得之处？那个说明倚靠那个判据，而那个判据倚靠一个没有人已显示如何作出的评估。

那最后一个问题是那个说明被导向的一个，而它被置于最后，因为上面一切关乎它。

Q10。 在什么条件下一个关系复数性之中的政体保有它诸构成结构的生成能力，同时仍裁定它必须裁定之物？一个什么也不裁定的政体保全每一个结构而治理无物。一个通过强加一个结构之诸术语而裁定的政体治理并熄灭它所治理之物。一个政体既不做那两者所处的诸条件是一个在这些条件之下的民主说明会不得不供出之物，而本文不供出它们。

一个关于那个清单形状的收尾观察。前两组的诸问题能在既存学科之内被追寻，而若干正在那里以其他描述被追寻。第三组的诸问题不能，因为它们关乎一个在此处被提议的连接。一个发现那次综述有用而那个民主读法不能说服的读者，可取那第一个而留那第二个，因为那次综述关于两个文献在何处未能相遇的诸发现不取决于那个读法是正确的。

关于方法的一则附记。 本文凭概念分析并凭综述论证，而它推进没有超出§1中所记录之观察的经验主张，那个观察即翻译已改善而不一致已持续，作为一个动机被供出，承载没有证据分量。§4的思想实验是一个凭规定分离出一个残余的装置，而规定确立关于世界的无物。

关于本次综述的一则附记。 §5中所处理的人类学文献在此为一个结构点被读，而它诸从业者会把那个读法当作稀薄。归于它的诸主张承载本文首要让步的分量，并出于那个缘由被保守地陈述。§7中所处理的关于语言相对论的经验文献是被争议的，而那个说明已被划出以致那个论证中没有任何东西取决于它的解决。