A response to Brown

Abstract

This rebuttal to my work is coming from a different perspective about language, race, and social justice. In response, I focus on how the rebuttal fails to address the core critique I have of the tiered vocabulary framework: that its very origins lie in deficit perceptions of working-class Black children and their alleged linguistic inferiority. I show how the rebuttal mischaracterises genealogical work and a raciolinguistic perspective, and instead sees the policing of language as about individual racist acts, rather than a system underpinned by raciolinguistic ideologies. I reject the rebuttal’s claim that tiered vocabulary is an asset-based framework, on the grounds that that no amount of tweaking or modification to a framework with deficit thinking at its roots will somehow fix it. I end with a brief discussion of genuinely asset-based frameworks which seek to uproot raciolinguistic ideologies and sustain the language practices of marginalised children.