Language crossing and linguistic racism: Mongolian immigrant women in Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACTDrawing on linguistic ethnographic data analysis, this article aims to expand the Rampton’s concept of ‘language crossing’ through integrating the notion of ‘linguistic racism’ experienced by Mongolian background immigrant women in Australia. These women encounter linguistic homogeneity, discrimination, and alienation in varied ways in their daily institutional and non-institutional settings based on how they speak English or their usage of heritage languages. As a result, they establish everyday linguistic resistance strategies to combat linguistic racism, which further add two new dimensions to the concept of language crossing – ‘crossing as a resistance strategy’ and ‘crossing as a passing strategy’. Adopting these crossing strategies allow these women to use their preferred forms of communication to resist dominant linguistic norms and standards in the dominant culture. These strategies further make it possible for these speakers to pass as the native speakers of that dominant language. Finally, the paper argues that it is almost impossible to understand ‘language crossing’ as a discrete understanding isolated from the concept of ‘linguistic racism’. It is better to examine these concepts together, as they seem to complement each other in terms of investigating the everyday linguistic practices, sociolinguistic realities and struggles that these immigrant women encounter.