Language is the muscle and sinew of culture. It is a bond of solidarity and so is politics. If one of the most important aspects of democratic politics is that it is non-oppressive, then the language of such politics should also be non-oppressive. How can language be democratic in this sense? How are the structures of domination and hierarchy reflected in language? John McCamant (1991, 1992), stated that domination is an all-pervasive relation-ship. An example of domination- where language is concerned, is devaluing and delegitimising by a dominant group of the use of the language of a subordinate group. Many indigenous people in the United States and other countries of the world are unfortunate victims of this practice. It has been the historical experience of indige-nous people, minority ethnic groups and immigrants to give in to the erosion of the use of their own tongues so as to learn the speech code of the, dominant group. From the Ainu of Japan, and the Uramos in Ethiopia to the Bangalis in, Pakistan, overt political repression or a more subtle economic and social manipulation have been used to devalue and delegitimise the language of the minority, or even, as in the case of the Bangali, of the numerically majority group. The then East Pakistanis were oppressed by the West.