According to the ‘fair background conditions position’ (De Schutter, 2008; Patten 2003, 2009 Réaume, 1991), the basic requirement of justice in the field of language is to establish conditions under which people can be said to have a fair opportunity to use their favoured language across numerous domains and also to strive for its continued success and survival. This paper identifies a shortcoming in existing accounts of ‘fair background conditions’, which is that they tend to focus solely on people’s holdings of certain basic linguistic resources, in the form of rights, goods and services. Such means or resources are important, but are only part of the story. To provide people with truly fair opportunities to use and sustain their respective languages will require taking into account the constraining influence of implicit social norms and conventions. Doing so will require the adoption of a capability-based, as opposed to a resource-based, approach.
