Norming without Coercion: Enunciative Strategies and Discursive Performativity in the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights

Abstract

This article offers an enunciative and lexicometric analysis of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (UDLR, Barcelona, 1996), an international normative text of soft law character, whose persuasive force rests on a set of quantifiably observable discursive strategies. Drawing on the categories of enunciative linguistics (epistemic, deontic, and axiological modalization) and the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005), the study examines how the authors construct a discourse that is both universal and mobilizing, in the absence of any binding legal mechanism. Qualitative analysis and a lexicometric approach supported by four original data tables demonstrate that the normative force of the UDLR is inseparable from its enunciative choices, which form a measurable coherent system in service of a rhetoric of fundamental rights that first establishes axiological legitimation before deploying deontic constraint, as confirmed by a cross-analysis of axiological and deontic densities across the text.