The article introduces the volume and reviews the present debate about linguistic human rights. Starting with some basic definitions, it traces the development of the concept and locates it within the framework of fundamental human rights in their second and third generation. The author sustains that international covenant have had relatively little impact on the defense of minority languages in the past, which is in part due to the ambiguous status of linguistic rights —as the right of expression and the right of communication. Although the issue is controversial, the article states that there is a growing consciousness that linguistic rights can only be fully granted if their collective (in addition to their individual) dimension is acknowledged. The right to communicate in one’s own language can only be enjoyed by a community of speakers, not by an isolated individual. The acceptance of collective rights, however, runs counter the traditional concept of a homogeneous nation state, and can only be based on a pluriethnic, pluralistic concept of society which recognizes ethnolinguistic minorities as at least partially autonomous peoples inside the state. The article then revises the development of sociolinguistics and concludes that —until recently— there has been little interest in legal questions within the discipline. Language politics and planning have rarely taken up a language rights perspective, and have limited their scope to explicit interventions by the state. Therefore more interdisciplinary research is needed in order to understand the nature of linguistic conflicts, to identify specific needs of linguistic minorities, and to point out the violation of linguistic human rights, as well as ‘perverse’ effects of language planning. The author suggests that a broad sociolinguistic approach which encompasses both planned and unplanned interventions on languages could set the stage to arrive at a better understanding of how linguistic human rights operate, how they are enjoyed or violated.