Speaking “broken” English: linguistic minorities building cross-cultural alliances in US higher education

Abstract

We draw on our lived experiences as faculty of communication studies from Asia, living and working in the United States, to explore how U.S. higher education constituted our identity as linguistic minorities. We also draw on tenets of collaborative autoethnography, producing insight on three levels of linguistic discrimination against non-standard English accents: institutional quality control of our accents/dialects, disciplinary requirements for publishing in English, and everyday communication with locals. The article highlights the value of collaborative autoethnography as a method of inquiry and reflection in a transnational context, providing a rare account of the ways in which international faculty members’ experience resonates with and transforms local-born Southerners who also face discrimination for their stigmatized dialects. We critique the blind spot that privileges hegemonic English in our scholarly communication and propose listening-oriented communication pedagogy to empower voices from the margins within the academia.