Language Oppression Research Articles

“Miss, can you speak English?”: raciolinguistic ideologies and language oppression in initial teacher education

Racism is pervasive within the lives of racially minoritised pre-service teachers in England, but little work has explored how perceptions about language feature here. Based on interviews and workshops with 26 racially minoritised pre-service teachers, I describe their experiences of language oppression whilst on school experience placements, where they were instructed by mentors to modify, flatten, and completely abandon their ways of talking if they were to be perceived as legitimate. I show how language oppression gets justified by mentors in reference to national policy, and how perceptions about the quality of speech are ideologically anchored to perceptions about the quality of teaching. I show how language oppression often materialises under seemingly benevolent and humanitarian guises, but inevitably maintains the raciolinguistic status quo because it instructs racialised teachers to adapt their speech so that it appropriates whiteness. I argue that language oppression is a key reason why England continues to fail to retain racially marginalised teachers.

The World's Languages in Crisis (Redux): Toward a Radical Reimagining for Global Linguistic Justice

The world's languages are in crisis: intergenerational transmission of around half the world's languages is collapsing. I argue that to understand and intervene in this situation, we need to radically reimagine what it means to call it a crisis. We need to think about this crisis not simply as an acute emergency (which it is), but also in Antonio Gramsci's sense of a period in which 'the old is dying but the new cannot be born'. In this sense, our present moment of crisis is one in which language oppression and language revitalization co-exist in dynamic tension. To analyze this Gramscian crisis of linguistic justice at a world scale, I argue that we need to conceive of a world system constituted by the articulation of nationalism, colonialism, racism, and capitalism. My description of this system and how it produces language oppression aims to support scholars and activists to seize our current moment of crisis and make positive interventions in the global system towards a future of greater linguistic justice.

The Necropolitics of Language Oppression

This article explores how language oppression—coerced language loss—contributes to physical death. The context for this investigation is the ongoing crisis of global linguistic diversity, which sees approximately half the world's languages facing language oppression. It is also a crisis of bodies and lives. This article proposes the necropolitics of language oppression as a decolonial anthropological approach for theorizing and confronting this global problem. Drawing on the anthropology of violence, genocide, and the state, within the context of anthropology's colonial turn since the 1970s, this article describes how states within colonial modernity create and exploit population-differentiated death through practices of social death, slow violence, and slow death. This perspective enables a synthesis of literature from linguistics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, translation studies, and public health to reveal the links between language oppression and death. The conclusion discusses how the approach developed in this article can help sustain languages and lives.

A Critical Classroom Study of Language Oppression: Manuel and Malena’s Testimonios, “Sentía como que yo no valía nada . se reían de mí”

ABSTRACT This critical classroom study of language oppression draws from the notion of existing inequalities based on power relations in education research, as addressed in a critical ethnography. This critical classroom study explores the cases of two recent immigrant students, “Manuel” and “Malena,” on the – U.S.–Mexican border near El Paso, Texas, who were attending a fifth-grade dual language class at “Border PK-5 Elementary School” (pseudonyms). This school followed a 50/50 dual immersion model from K-fourth grade. By the fifth grade in this school, 70% of the academic time was taught in English and 30% in Spanish. Documented data from observations in the classroom and students’ multimodal testimonios reveal acts of linguistic bullying against the two recent immigrants based on their underdeveloped second language, English, when self-regulated learning was at work in a cooperative learning environment.

Lexical necropolitics: The raciolinguistics of language oppression on the Tibetan margins of Chineseness

This article aims to expand raciolinguistic theory to examine the issue of language oppression, i.e., enforced language loss. I used Foucauldian theories of race and racism to establish a link between lexical purism and language oppression, giving rise to a raciolinguistic theory of language oppression that I refer to as ‘lexical necropolitics.’ This issue is explored through a case study from northeast Tibet. I describe how state racism and the subordination of minority languages in the People's Republic of China has led to a grass-roots lexical purism campaign among Tibetans, and argue that since 2008, this purism has been linked to language oppression by the emergence of a new, biosovereign configuration of state power.

Abandoning Endangered Languages: Ethical Loneliness, Language Oppression, and Social Justice

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: 'Abandoning endangered languages: ethical loneliness, language oppression, and social justice', American Anthropologist 122.1 (2020): 164-69 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13372. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions

Articulating language oppression: colonialism, coloniality and the erasure of Tibet’s minority languages

ABSTRACTRoche’s article discusses ‘language oppression’ as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of ‘race’, nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the ‘enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion’. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language discrimination, or ‘linguicism’. Roche explores one aspect of linguicism—language erasure—and how it relates to language oppression, focusing on Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He examines how language oppression is produced through practices of erasure: the ways in which certain populations and their languages are systematically rendered discursively invisible. He argues that the erasure of certain languages in the Tibetan context is systematically reproduced by two otherwise opposed political projects: the colonial project of the PRC state; and the international Tibet movement that seeks to resist it. He refers to the contingent cooperation between these two opposed projects as ‘articulated oppression’. In concluding the article he examines how the disarticulation of this oppression is a necessary condition for the emancipation of Tibet’s minority languages, and discusses the broader significance of this study for understanding language oppression, and its relation to other forms of oppression.

МОВНИЙ АСПЕКТ ПОСТКОЛОНІАЛЬНОЇ МЕНТАЛЬНОСТІ УКРАЇНЦІВ: ДЕСТРУКЦІЯ «ПРАВА МОВИ» ЯК ФУНДАМЕНТУ ПРАВА НАЦІЇ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem of postcolonial mentality in contemporary Ukraine, in particular the question of its linguistic component. The era of neocolonialism continues to exist even after the actual collapse of the colonial system in the twentieth century. The consequences of the long colonial past of peoples and nations are the deformed sense of national identity and, accordingly, the phenomenon of postcolonial mentality. More than three hundred years of the colonial regime in Ukraine and the purposeful policy of cultural expansion and language oppression promoted the formation of such a distorted type of national consciousness. The main manifestation of post-colonial mentality is a contemptuous attitude to the Ukrainian language, a diminution of its meaning as the foundation for nation-building, since artificially spreaded bilingualism actually appears as a means of Russification. It is proved that, despite the purposeful but inconsistent policy of renaissance during the Independence, the dominant influence of the Russian language in public and everyday use can not be ignored, since these phenomena are mostly chauvinistic in nature, which manifests itself in an apparent offensive on the legitimization of the Ukrainian language as the language of the State Ukraine, as the foundations of the right of the nation as a whole, as well as acting as a field for speculation as a conscious means of successfully manipulated technique in the slogan of the necessity of bilingualism, which is positioned as an essential attribute of the modern globalized world. Ukrainian/Russian dichotomy appears axiologically as shameful / prestigious, which, according to the author, is one of the manifestations of the post-colonial mentality of Ukrainians, namely the linguistic aspect of the functioning and even the collision between two cultures, nations, ideological systems and mentality. The language of the postcolonial mentality of Ukrainians is the subject of an analysis of the problem of finding means and efforts for the consolidation of the Ukrainian nation in connection with the urgent need for confrontation and prevention of linguocide by the aggressor state, since such colonial practices are total anachronism in a democratic society.

Spanish not spoken here: Accounting for the racialization of the Spanish language in the experiences of Mexican migrants in the United States

For Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States, the Spanish language is a component of identity that is often viewed as fundamental to their human experience. This deep connection between language and identity becomes problematic as a result of what we suggest in this paper is a deeply racialized attack on the use of the Spanish language. Drawing upon ethnographic and qualitative in-depth interview research with first-generation Mexican migrants in the US, we bring together the literatures on race and ethnicity to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the ethnic and racialized processes involved in reaction to and treatment of the use of Spanish in the US. Centering the voices and experiences of first-generation migrants, we are able to explicate their experiences with respect to intersecting mechanisms of ethnocentrism, language oppression, and racism.

Finnish Child Language and Culture in Sweden: An Original Luleå Story

Finnish Child Language and Culture in Sweden:An Original Luleå Story Lydia Kokkola (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo of performance of When Winter’s Stars Shine Here. When Winter’s Stars Shine Here: A Story of Language Oppression On a cold winter’s night in Norrland, Sweden’s most northern district, the snow falls as two teenagers wait for their bus home from school. They are annoyed because their teacher was unimpressed by their presentations about their ethnic identity and their relationship to the region in which they live. So begins a theatrical piece, When Winter’s Stars Shine Here, which combines film, dance, and electronic text with a dramatic performance in seven languages: Swedish, Finnish, Meänkieli, Northern and Southern Sámi, as well as Finnish and Swedish sign languages. It is unlikely that anyone in the audience can follow all seven languages, but for once those from national minority backgrounds are in a better position than the majority population. And so everyone gets to experience the somewhat bewildering daily lives of those whose dominant language is not the same as the majority population. The play is a result of collaboration between three theater groups in the Northern Norrland region and the national theater, and requires a brief socio-geographical explanation. Norrland as a whole comprises roughly 59% of Sweden’s total landmass, but is home to just 12% of the country’s population. For many administrative [End Page 147] purposes, Norrland is subdivided into Southern Norrland (södra Norrland) for which the main city is Umeå and Northern Norrland (norra Norrland) for which the main city is Luleå. Northern Norrland covers the historical provinces of Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Lappland, and is the cultural home for two main groups of Swedish national minorities: The Sámi (formerly known by the perjorative term “Lapp”) who speak a variety of Sámi languages which are not all mutually comprehensible and the Tornedalerna who come from the Torne Valley. The Torne River divides Finland from Sweden, although for several months a year the river is frozen and the border is neither visible nor relevant as citizens from both sides of the river socialize, marry, shop, work and engage in hobbies such as fishing and hunting which take them back and forth across the borders. Until 1809, Finland was part of Sweden and although today one is required to carry some form of identification (a driver’s license will suffice) when crossing the border, in practice border checks are very rare. Until the period taken up in the play, the main language of the region was Meänkieli (literally “our language”), which is very closely related to Finnish.1 Finnish and Swedish belong to different language families (Finnish is Finno-Ugric and Swedish is a Germanic language); they are not mutually comprehensible. Since all Finns study Swedish in school, Meänkieli is comprehensible for Finns (and vice versa) with only minor problems, but Swedish speakers cannot understand either Meänkieli or Finnish. Northern Norrland is also home to significant numbers of two of the other national minorities: Finns and Romani.2 Although Romani Chib is the official language of the Romani, the majority of Romanies in the Northern Norrland region are Finnish speakers. The play focuses on the period in the 1950s when the speaking of minority languages was discouraged, and in some cases forbidden. It also includes a scene depicting the State Commission of 1921, which took several steps towards suppressing minority languages. Not only was education in the minority languages banned, libraries were forbidden to stock Finnish books and there were calls from teachers and farmers to forbid the use of Finnish in the playground. Schooling took place exclusively in Swedish, and children were publically shamed if they used their home languages. Girls were encouraged to report on the boys for speaking Finnish (Winsa Language Attitudes 120). During the Second World War, attitudes towards the Finns (who first fought the Soviet Union and then Germany) became more positive, and with that came a more positive attitude towards standard Finnish, although less so towards Meänkieli (Winsa Language Attitudes 154). Economic migration from Finland to Sweden in...

Hōgen ronsō: the great Ryukyuan languages debate of 1940

This paper analyzes a language ideological debate in which the status and utility of the Ryukyuan languages were discussed. One fraction supported the continuous oppression of the Ryukyuan languages as an inevitable means for Standard Japanese language spread in the Ryukyus. Their critics called for calmer judgment, pointing out the cultural value of the Ryukyuan languages. In the course of the debate, opposing visions of future linguistic orders in the Ryukyus emerged. It was the vision of those calling for Ryukyuan language oppression which turned into reality. The reason for such sociolinguistic change is rooted in power inequalities between the Japanese mainland and the Ryukyu Islands. Today, all Ryukyuan languages are set to become extinct by 2050 if no counter-action is taken. The language ideological notions connected to the Ryukyuan languages in the course of Japan’s social and linguistic modernization and the reproduction of these arguments by one fraction of the debate constitute the obstacles that all those seeking Ryukyuan language revitalization must surmount. They may find useful points of departure for doing so in the arguments of the critics. However, the debate is also of interest for students of linguistics and the social sciences, since their disciplines do not emerge as “neutral” in the course of debate. Rather, they constitute central pillars in the modernist quest for homogeneity and monolingualism in a linguistically diverse state.

Language oppression and resistance: the case of middle class latinos in the United States

The growth of the US latino population is a source of concern for many white Americans, who assert this means the death of the US way of life and the English language. This racialized rhetoric masks an attempt to maintain the pre-eminence of the language of the dominant group over latinos and thus helps whites to sustain their political-economic domination. Using interviews with seventy-two middle-class latinos in seven US states, we document five strategies employed by the whites in everyday interaction to discourage latinos’ heritage language use and resistance to such discrimination. Finally, we discuss ideological elements in US culture that hide the racism in these language struggles.

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

754 Many thanks to Dipesh Chakrabarty, Geoff Eley, Dana Luciano, Nasser Hussain, Roger Rouse, Adam Thurschwell, and Martha Umphrey for their meticulous engagements, as well as to audiences at Amherst, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, American Political Science Association, American Studies Association, and Cleveland State. Special nostalgic thanks to Virginia Chang, my original collaborator in the Obesity and Poverty conference (2002). 1. See David Harvey, “The Body as Accumulation Strategy,” Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 97–116. To call Harvey polemical is not to devalue his profound contributions to understanding the productive destructiveness of capital; in his work, a polemic is a call for precision, not a way of drowning it out. Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Disregarding Poetic Transidentity

Analysing Sign Language Poetry by Rachel Sutton-Spence with Paddy Ladd and Gillian Rudd. (New York/Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 256 pp. Hardcover, $75, ISBN 1C40393-507-6) One of the signs of the post-9/11 period is that there is little actual forward thinking about poetry. This is, as Rachel Sutton- Spence reveals in Analysing Sign Language Poetry, as dismal a fact for the revolutionary medium of sign language poetry as it is for poetry in general. Sutton-Spence is a lecturer in Deaf Studies at the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol, where she researches and teaches sign language linguistics and the social context of sign languages. This background would seem to give her an ideal perspective from which to draw important conclusions on the relationship between social constructions of deafness and the "series of linguistic signals" through which "we know that something is a poem" in sign language. Sutton-Spence's study of sign language prosody, or the principles of poetic metric and spatial patterning, does have its relevance. There are those within the Deaf and hearing communities alike who have long recognized the need for a thorough meta-analysis of sign language poetics. One can say that such an analysis should be of the utmost significance to anyone concerned with the diverse schools [End Page 342] and movements found in twentieth-century poetic experimentation in the United States. Analysing Sign Language Poetry deals with this same period of experimentation. Specifically, this work arises from the emergence of sign language as the primary medium for poetic expression among the Deaf literati, a major transition from colonized English-oriented, print-based Deaf poetic enterprise. This shift in Western Deaf culture corresponds with a period of social and political opposition to "official" English language oppression of Deaf Americans. Sutton-Spence argues that sign language poetry has played a central role in this transition. The author possesses a wealth of knowledge with which to contribute to the growing body of prose, recognizing the traditions that make up the Deaf poetics canon. In addition to her linguistics background, she is an authority on the subject of the British and American Sign Language poet Dorothy Miles (1931–1993). Miles, the author wrote in an online biographical sketch (European Cultural Heritage Online 2003), affected the "development of the concept of sign language poetry within the Deaf Community" in a way that makes her central to its heritage. Analysing Sign Language Poetry undertakes to explain the significance of that statement. Dorothy Miles was provocative in her person and her poetry. She was both ambiguous and multiple enough so that various groups have created different histories with correspondingly particular modes, methods, or goals around her. She was of mixed linguacultural heritage. She wrote poems in English and had status as a deaf poet. Beyond Deaf culture, she is held in esteem by the disability movement. Dorothy Miles reinvented her identity several times over the course of her life. Her identity was formed, negotiated, confirmed, and challenged by the varied export and import of her sign language and written poetry among the communities she engaged and from which she gained varying degrees of membership as one of their own. She lived long enough to participate in the radicalization of American Sign Language. She lived with and made poetry through episodes of clinical depression and mania. Finally, she took the drastic measure of throwing herself out of her second-story apartment window to her death. [End Page 343] Through a more detached lens, Sutton-Spence sees in Dorothy Miles a poet whose work provides a symbol for postmodernist Deaf culture. Dorothy Miles, notes Sutton-Spence, "was in the unique position to develop a clear understanding of sign poetry principles." Those principles are founded on the idea that the proof of poetry is in its relation to the language of the street, the language ordinary people use. Miles expressed it like this: "To look at spoken poetry, first look at spoken language. To look at signed poetry...

The Welsh Language, Oppression And Probation Practice

The effect of language oppression is still relatively unexplored in social work and probation text books. In this article, Doris Adlam, probation officer in a groupwork team in the North Wales Probation Service, and Elisabeth Lynn, Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Wales, Bangor, explore how it can be used as an instrument of oppression, and argue that a genuinely bilingual service is a crucial prerequisite to effective practice with Welsh speaking probation clients.