Basically I am looking at articles that examine how language rights (the ones guaranteed by the European Language Charter) are implemented on local level. Most of the articles I found are about laws, but they do not look at implementation. What are the main barriers, how does it look from bellow, from the perspective of local (minority and majority) people, local decision-makers, etc.
In the USA context, you can look at the way these rights are implemented in education, media, and the use of language in legal documents. In my view, these three spheres are the most important ones as they are about how institutions and organizations will address already given rights. In education, for instance, you can look at the way the Bilingual Act was applied and has been applied by schools. In media, you can look at how speech rights are applied to multilingual contexts (I have a few papers on the subject). Last, the history of what languages will be used by governments is also a way addressing the issue of minority language rights implementation.
Stephen May, "Misconceiving Minority Language Rights: Implications for liberal political theory", in Will Kymlicka and Allen Patten (eds), Language Rights and Political Theory (Oxford: OUP, 2003), 123-52.
Stephen May, "Accommodating and Resisting Minority Language Policy: The case of Wales", International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 3: 2 (2000), 101-28.
May also has a book on the issue of Minority language rights.
Also, see the article here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:LPOL.0000036182.40797.23#/page-1
Another article here:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sally_Holt/publication/242279768_The_Human_Rights_of_Linguistic_Minorities_and_Language_Policies/links/54cb5c1c0cf2598f7116c0fc.pdf#page=9
Article The Human Rights of Linguistic Minorities and Language Policies
Thank you for the ideas. As I see from the abstracts, some of the suggested articles will prove very useful.
I have data on Hungarian language-usage in administration in Romania. We had a survey among all settlements, which according to the law need to implement Hungarian language rights and we have data on these settlements online communication as well. It seems that only a few of the settlements actually implemented the law (basically in most of the cases you cannot use written Hungarian, but you can communicate orally), and there are some interesting influencing factors, such as the ethnicity of the mayor is not a guarantee for language rights implementation. Moreover, not even the Hungarian population is very active in using its language in these situation.
We are planning to do some interviews, to get more explanation about this lack of interest from the Hungarian political elite in implementing a law which was adopted as a result of the pressure exercised by Hungarian political elite.
So I am looking for similar articles, studies, how others looked at this problem, what methodology they used, etc. The problem is, that many of the studies that I found 1) do not go beyond the legal framework, or analyze the linguistic regime in the country 2) analyze the discourses surrounding the implementation, 3) take a generalistic approach on the issue.
You might find something if you look on the use of the Basque language in the Basque regions of Spain. It is not, of course, an ideal parallel - Basque was banned from use in public during the Franco years, whereas even in the darkest days off Ceausescu's rule there was no ban on speaking Hungarian in public - but the minority demand for the right to use the language, after granted, is followed by minority indifference, or a preference to use the state language (whatever is easier, perhaps?)
I wonder whether people might think forms filled out in Hungarian won't be responded to as quickly as those filled out in Romanian? (even for purely technical reasons - everyone speaks Romanian, fewer people speak Hungarian)
Also, at the personal level, one might demand forms in Hungarian, but if one speaks good Romanian, why bother?
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