Join the authors of “Toward Racial Justice in Linguistics: Interdisciplinary Insights into Theorizing Race in the Discipline and Diversifying the Profession” (Language, Volume 96, Number 4 (December 2020)) and several of the authors of the paper responses for a webinar about the paper and response process with an emphasis on the next steps towards greater racial justice in linguistics. The authors presented their articles for the first hour and answered questions in the last half hour. The webinar included an overview of how to prepare and submit chapter proposals for edited volumes Inclusion in Linguistics and Decolonizing Linguistics. Read more on the edited volumes.

View a Recording of the Webinar

You can read the open-access papers here.

Please send any advance questions for the authors to Anne Charity Hudley.

Abstract:

This article builds on the Linguistic Society of America's Statement on Race to argue that linguistics urgently needs an interdisciplinarily informed theoretical engagement with race and racism. To be adequate, a linguistic theory of race must incorporate the perspectives of linguistic researchers of different methodological approaches and racial backgrounds and must also draw on theories of race in neighboring fields, including anthropology, sociology, and psychology, as well as speech and hearing sciences, composition and literacy studies, education, and critical interdisciplinary race studies. The lack of comprehensive and up-to-date theoretical, analytical, and political understandings of race within linguistics not only weakens research by erasing, marginalizing, and misrepresenting racially minoritized groups, but it also diminishes the impact of the entire field by devaluing and excluding the intellectual contributions of researchers of color, whose work on this topic is rarely welcome within linguistics departments. The article therefore argues for a rethinking of both linguistic scholarship and linguistics as a discipline in more racially inclusive and socially just terms.

Panelists:

Mary Bucholtz is Professor and Chair in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also Director of the Center for California Languages and Cultures. She is an affiliated faculty member in the Departments of Anthropology, Education, Feminist Studies, and Spanish and Portuguese as well as in the Programs in Comparative Literature and in Latin American and Iberian Studies. Bucholtz is a sociocultural linguist who conducts research on language, race, gender, and youth in the United States; her work also examines language and power in institutional settings. She is the author of White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the editor or coeditor of multiple volumes, most recently Feeling It: Language, Race, and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning (Routledge, 2018). Bucholtz is a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America and a recipent of the Award for Public Outreach and Community Service from the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.

 

Anne Charity Hudley is the North Hall Endowed Chair in the Linguistics of African America at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research and publications address the relationship between English language variation and K-16 educational practices and policies. She is the co-author of three books: The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research: Success in and Beyond College, Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools, and We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom. She has worked with K-12 educators through lectures and workshops sponsored by public and independent schools throughout the country. Charity Hudley is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). Charity Hudley has served as a consultant to the National Research Council Committee on Language and Education and the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Broadening Participation in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) sciences.

 

Aris Clemons is a PhD student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as a graduate portfolio student in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her MA in linguistic theory from Syracuse University in 2012 and continued her career as a high school Spanish teacher and administrator in Brooklyn, NY until the start of her doctoral studies at UT Austin in 2016. Originally from the San Francisco bay area, Aris was raised by a group of social activists who significantly impacted her commitment to justice for both linguistically and racially minoritized students. This formation has spurred her interest in culturally sustaining pedagogies as well as her commitment to mentoring students traditionally underrepresented in the academy. As a doctoral student she has had the opportunity to work as a Teaching Assistant for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program and recently designed and taught a course entitled Racial Linguistics. As a scholar of language and race, her research examines how socially constructed categories are concretized in the public psyche. In particular, her work explores the impact of racial and linguistic ideologies and attitudes on the construction of ‘self’ at the individual and community level. Drawing on data from members of the emergent pan-ethnic grouping of Afro-Latinxs, her research problematizes racial and linguistic essentializations that result in the marginalization and further erasure of certain identities and the (re)constitution of colonially formed social hierarchies within educational contexts.

Michel DeGraff is Professor of linguistics at MIT, co-founder of the MIT-Haiti Initiative and founding member of Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen.  His research contributes to an egalitarian and uniformitarian approach to Creole languages.  His writings engage intellectual history and critical race theory, especially the links between power-knowledge hierarchies and (mis)representations of Creole languages. His work is anchored in a broader agenda for human rights and social justice, with Haiti as one spectacular case of post-colonies where the national language spoken by all (Haitian Creole) is disenfranchised while the colonial language spoken by few (French) is enlisted for élite closure and geo-political control.  The MIT-Haiti Initiative http://haiti.mit.edu http://MIT-Ayiti.NET tackles these political challenges heads-on as it tries to democratize access to quality education in Haiti. 

 

 

Alice Gaby is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Monash University, Australia. Her research explores the relationship between grammar, culture and cognition, as well as topics in semantic and structural typology. She is a non-Indigenous linguist who has collaborated with speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre and other Paman languages spoken in and around the community of   Pormpuraaw (Cape York Peninsula, Australia) since 2002, as well as supporting language revitalization efforts in other communities around Australia. She is Vice-President of the Australian Linguistics Society and Deputy Chair of Living Languages. 

 

 

 

 

Anna Lawrence is a doctoral student and scholar of Iberian and Latin American Linguistics in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on language ideologies, linguistic anthropology, and raciolinguistics while drawing on interpretative frameworks in Cultural and Latina/o/x Studies and Critical Race Theory. More specifically, she examines the racialization of the Spanish language and the processes of cultural commodification and symbolic exploitation inherent in hegemonic discourses surrounding Spanish-speaking populations. Her collaborative work with Aris Clemons on fostering an ethos of anti-racist scholarship in linguistics has been published in Language. She has also served as an instructor of Spanish language and U.S. Latina/o/x Linguistics at UT-Austin in her home department as well as in Mexican American & Latina/o Studies. 

 

 

Wesley Leonard is an associate professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Drawing from his training in linguistics and experience in community language programs, he strives to build capacity for Native American language reclamation in ways that support sovereignty, promote wellness, and advance decolonization. A citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, a focus of his scholarship has been his tribal nation’s formerly sleeping language, myaamia, which was brought back into his community from historical documentation. A collaborative project that he co-developed, Natives4Linguistics – now an LSA special interest group, promotes the integration of Native American and other Indigenous community needs, values, and intellectual tools into linguistic science. He is also part of the LSA Faculty Learning Community on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Linguistics.

 

 

Christine Mallinson is Director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship and Professor of Language, Literacy and Culture and Affiliate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Mallinson’s interdisciplinary research examines the intersections of language, culture, and education, focusing on English language variation in the United States. Among other publications, her books and edited collections include Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools, We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom, Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications, and Rural Voices: Language, Identity, and Social Change across Place. Mallinson is the former chair of the Ethics Committee of the Linguistic Society of America (2018-2021) and has also served on the Nominating Committee and the Committee on Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics.

 

 

Dr. Ignacio Montoya is an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned his PhD in linguistics at the City University of New York. His current research program focuses on the intersection of linguistic theory, language revitalization/reclamation, and decolonization. Since arriving in Reno in 2017, he has been studying the Numu language (Northern Paiute) and has been working with members of the local Native American community to preserve and fortify the local Indigenous languages.

 

 

 

Lesley Woods is from the Ngiyampaa language group from Western New South Wales. She grew up in and around Ivanhoe and has lived and has worked in the Pilbara region of Western Australia for many years.

Lesley collaborated on Ngiyampaa language projects with linguist Dr Tamsin Donaldson over many years. Lesley spent several years working in her own community in New South Wales, teaching language classes to community members and developing a Ngiyampaa language program at the local primary school.

More recently, Lesley has been interested in ethics in linguistic research, this has come about through her own experiences and insights into linguistics in Australia and was the topic a research project for her Master’s degree.

She completed her Masters at Monash University and is currently a PhD candidate at Australian National University.