Linguistic Racism

Definition: “The ideologies and practices that are utilised to conform, normalise and reformulate an unequal and uneven linguistic power between language users (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2015) – directed at culturally and linguistically different (CaLD) or Indigenous backgrounds around the globe” (Dovchin, 2020).

Introduction

This project was initiated as a contribution to the Decolonizing Teaching, Indigenizing Learning Ally Toolkit (in development). While we believe that many people have had, and continue to have, direct experience of linguistic racism, we also believe that the term itself may not be familiar to many people. Our goal is to name and introduce this phenomenon, experienced by so many, so that we can discuss the impact of linguistic racism in education and in the daily lived experience of so many in our communities.

We are extremely grateful to Dr. Sender Dovchin for taking the time to meet with us and join us in the discussion below. We have uploaded this as an audio file only, as we wanted people to be listeners rather than viewers of this discussion. We are conscious that all three of us speak English with our own particular accent and were sensitive during transcription of the times where we might have made “mistakes” or where we might have been more articulate. The fact that we had a lively and informative discussion despite these minor issues only underscores the point that we will all make “mistakes” when we speak and that the idea that we need to hold ourselves and others up to a “standard” only serves to inhibit communication and silence certain voices. We would like listeners to keep in mind that this was an informal conversation and that, as in most such conversations, if we could do it over we might express ourselves differently: give different examples, be more/less specific etc. – In short, this was an exploratory conversation that we are sharing so that you can take it from whatever you find of value.  

We also uploaded the transcript (below) for those who would simply rather read the conversation or for those who might prefer to read along with the speakers.
Please forward any questions or comments to Kieran Forde at decolonize.together@ubc.ca

Links / resources

Introduction / Background

 

Transcript

Kieran
Hi, I'm Kieran Forde

Natasha
Hi, my name is Natacha Monestel Mora

Kieran
We are PhD candidates in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. And we're here today with Dr. Sender. Dovchin, who is joining us from Perth, Australia. Good morning. Sender.

Sender Dovchin
Hi, everyone, thanks for inviting me.

Kieran
Dr. Dovchin completed her MA and PhD in language education at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. She's currently an associate professor , a principal research fellow, and the director of research at the School of Education at Curtin University. She's the author of numerous publications and seven books, including most recently her book Translingual Discrimination, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. She's joining us here to introduce us to the phenomenon of linguistic racism, something she has researched extensively and to answer some questions regarding linguistic racism in the K 12 context, and its connection to colonialism. So let's get started. Natacha, want to kick us off?

Natacha
Yeah, yeah. We're going to start with some questions regarding linguistic racism, the concept itself and how we can translate it to, you know, to an audience, or a teachers’ audience. So, we want to know a little bit how, what is linguistic racism? And can you give, give us an overview for those who are unfamiliar with the term? 

Sender
Yeah, sure. So, linguistic racism is sort of rather like emerging sort of term or concept. So I wrote about linguistic racism in my 2020 special issue on linguistic racism, which was published in International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. So in that special issue, I try to define the term, right. So, according to that definition, basically, linguistic racism really refers to these all ideologies and then ideology structures and also the relevant practices, which are used to sort of legitimate or which are used to reproduce this unequal power, unequal division, between, like, between language uses between groups only are defined basically on the basis of language. So, linguistic racism is sort of like, you know, all these ideologies and practices in which our for example what, what kind of language what kind of particular language that person for example, uses as a first language or as a second language. And then you know, these people use those language or linguistic repertoires or resources, or which language this person does use or does not, you know, does not use and all of that. So, all these norms and, you know, all these rules or practices and ideology, ideologies that are sort of like and related to persons linguistic repertoire. So, when I say linguistic repertoire, you know, how that person sort of, you know, speak language or use language. So, that is basically, you know, in short, what we mean by linguistic racism.

Kieran
Um. And, as an emerging term or concept, what, what did people call this before, like, I have this sense of people sort of felt this, or certainly experienced this right. But what do people talk about it under another name, or was it part of some other way of looking at things or what did people refer to this concept as in earlier times?

Sender
I mean, in my field, which is applied linguistics, we had some, you know, previous research based on language-based discrimination, so, it wasn't necessarily called linguistic racism. Sometimes, I know some research which was, some research, some group of research and they call it just linguistic discrimination or discrimination, right. And recently, I know from especially from North America, we have a concept called racial linguistic perspective, which is, you know, sort of developed by (Nelson) Flores and Jonathan Rosa. But all these terms are sort of like, although the main ethos are quite similar, you know, when you really look at the analysis and context it’s also, you know, quite different as well. For example, the linguistic race, racism talking here is basically the data is based on multilingual or multicultural communities in Australia. Whereas, the North American perspective, racial linguistic perspective is basically based on very much the sort of like North American context right? And so on and on, the other group of status which is called linguistic discrimination, it does not necessarily look at the other intersectional traits, because linguistic racism is not only about sort of like language-based discrimination, because we're going to look at other intersectional racisms as well, as part of the linguistic racism. So yes, we did have a different sort of terms before, but overall, especially in applied linguistics, kind of sort of new, you know, trends that are emerging, but it's emerging very actively in recent years. Yeah. Sorry, and I wanted to add that, for example, I was giving this public talk at the Western Australian Public Museum, and I had a lot of, you know, public members who attended my talk. And after my talk, they were coming to me and telling me, you know, for me, it happened a lot like especially a workplace where there was this woman from Colombia, you know, and she has a very strong Colombian accent when she speaks English, right? And then she said, although she is a lawyer, her accent is always mocked at workplace and she's sort of like really took it really sensitively she and she feels very inferior about her accent. And she told me like, I didn't know how to call this now I know it's called linguistic racism. So it can the research can be translated into practice in terms of also general sort of people.

Kieran
So yeah, that's, that's, I guess, our main purpose today that scholars have been talking about this in terms of linguistics and other things. But I think, you know, people have experienced this so much, and when we've mentioned this to people, they go “Oh, yeah, that, that thing that happens to so many people and around us”. So Natacha, I think where are we gonna go next with this?

Natacha
Yeah, it resonates to me because it's the same experience for me. So, like I have this strong accent and, and I have like a lot of, you know, for example, even for doing things like that, like, okay, I'm shy when I'm presenting, when I'm writing, it's a different, different, totally different experience. So that's why it resonates to me, you know, like to work with your work too. And we are also interested in context, work context and especially the school context. So, can you provide examples probably from your research on what linguistic racism looks like in schools? I mean, if you have examples. I mean you talk about the lawyer and other work context but probably schools are interesting for our audience.

Sender
Yeah, sure. So, my research in terms of linguistic racism, it was based on this bigger large research I did at Curtin University with my research team as well. So we sort of worked with around 150, you know, non-English speaking background migrants, and out of that 150 migrants, we also worked some students, you know, in primary and high school in an Australian context. Also, we also interviewed their parents as well, right. So, we do have some data in terms of school. So when we talk about a school, linguistic racism usually happens in, ah, to students who whose English is sort of not their first language right. So English as additional language students or you know, international students in an Australian context or migrant background students, or you know, in the household they speak their first language, for example, their heritage language and now when they go to school, they need to speak English, right. But as I said, linguistic racism is also not only you know, as part of the language-based discrimination, also, the race is heavily involved in that, you know. If you're a person with migrant background, if you're not, for example, Anglo-Saxon background person, if you're, you know, the person of color, and then plus your English is not your first language, linguistic racism is obviously more, you know, the reflection of the linguistic race and can be very heavy on these people. So that's why the (term) racism comes in as handy as well, right. So, so based on our data, I actually published a paper in other paper in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and that paper had some examples from schools. So I can give you some examples that I have sort of, you know, that I have sort of presented in that paper. So in that paper, I can give you the example of the Vietnamese background student who, you know, moved to Australia when she was 12, 13. And then she, you know, joined Australian public school, right after she emigrated to Australia from Vietnam. And obviously, her English was not good, right? She sort of really struggled with her English at school. When she started speaking or learning English, she had a very heavy Vietnamese accent. She, she couldn't really catch up with the study. She was not really familiar with, sort of like, you know, the school curriculum and all of that. But for all of that, what she felt was she felt really ashamed. She felt really ashamed of being a migrant background student or being a Vietnamese student. And only because of her English, because her English was so bad, as soon as she started opening her mouth, she said, you know, her classmates used to laugh, right? Like laugh as a class everybody would laugh at her. So that's one example that she was, she was she felt really hurtful and I call that as part of the linguistic racism, ethnic accent bullying, because it's part of school bullying as well. You know? Yeah,

Kieran
Yeah, just following on from that. So ethnic accent bullying in schools. I'm wondering, you've certainly identified mental health, the impact of linguistic racism, on the mental health of students so I'm wondering, is there sort of a, an unexplored role for teachers to address or deal with this? Or is it something that teachers are aware of and find trouble navigating or is this something they need further attention brought to? Where's, where's the roll in teacher in addressing this?

Sender
Yeah, no, it definitely needs more attention. Because, as I said, there's this phenomenon of linguistic racism is very sort of, like new phenomenon in Australian context, I guess, because I worked in an Australian context. Right. And I think especially okay, we as academics, you know, we know this is happening and all of that, but when you try to translate our research into practice, it's not really you know, there. So when I, for example, I did, I did give this talk for primary school teachers in Australia recently, so I talked to some primary school teachers have introduced the term linguistic racism, they were not really aware of that. They were like, you know, we're so busy. We have so many students and, for us, with linguistic rights, so we haven't really thought about it. You know, there are some sort of bullying you know, examples, all of that, but, you know, we just didn't really think about it. So thank you for, like, you know, highlighting this because we are more aware of what is happening now, right. So, we really need to raise awareness, especially the educators, teachers, primary, public school teachers, we've got a long way to go.

Kieran
It's a sort of, maybe, yeah, and under, under-explored kind of bullying. It's that sort of insidious stuff that can happen in a classroom that obviously would happen in the schoolyard as well. And when we think of bullying, we think of the sort of general psychological stuff that's generalized and physical bullying. But the focus specifically on ethnic accent bullying, or the overarching concept of Lincoln, linguistic racism, yeah, so something that perhaps you're saying people need to know some more about?

Natacha
Yeah.

Sender
What I mean, it's really sort of like a sub, hidden sort of racism, right? We talk about other types of racism a lot. For example, racism based on one's skin color, racism based, for example, I guess, I don't know all these are religion, right? But when we talk about linguistic racism, it's very hidden. Not so many people sort of like take it seriously. Or, or, you know, they didn't really think about it. And then when they see the examples, they're like, Yeah, right. This is what happened to my child, you know? So that ethnic accent bullying is really sort of common, especially for non-English speaking background, migrant background, students in an Australian, you know, public school context. But also, on top of that, is another trait of linguistic racism. We call it the explicit type of linguistic racism right? So what is explicit linguistic racism is basically you can actually tell, identify, straightaway, this is linguistic racism is very clear that you know, you're being racist through your language. So, what is that is, for example, you know, people will explicitly say some, you know, racially motivated words or expressions, you know, and then the other person that will get really hurt by that, but when I was talking to one student who's I think he was from India, Indian background student, he was really hurt and I would have I have identified it as linguistic racism. So, when he goes to school, you know, in Australian context, you know, they have lunch boxes, and they, they prepare their own lunch boxes and they bring their own lunch boxes and they sit in the yard during the break time and start eating their lunch right. So he used to bring this Indian curry, right, Indian curry, his traditional foods for example, and then he was bullied as well. Like I will call it explicit type of linguistic racism because it's coming up from the perpetrator. And then they say, Oh, God, uh, you're not you're a “curry puff”, right? “You're a curry puff. I can't stand the smell of the curry.” And he was hurt a lot. And then I remember he told me it became physical because he was so hurt hit the other preparator one day and it escalated to a higher level. It become a problem for that school, you know, and the parents were really concerned and heard about that. And then from that event, that boy he never wanted to take his traditional food to the school yard. He would tell his parents, I want Western food I want sandwich,

Kieran
Right? So there's that sort of internalization of the inferiority complex and sort of rejection of your traditional culture. And this could potentially lead to problems at home perhaps seeing their parents as the instigator of their trouble. More so than the bully, right?

Sender
Yeah, exactly. So it just it just related to so many other problems, the inferiority internalizing and all of that right so the parents they adopted they not sure what to do, and then they go meet the teachers and teachers are not really sure what to do as well. Right. So yeah, these these kinds of examples are very, very common. But, you know, we need more sort of like evidence,

Natacha
Yeah, and even in terms of teachers themselves, they don't even know about this implicit racism. They might be applying. I mean, like I’m working with teachers now and, it's like they tend to assess them differently for example or like, without even noticing. So I think awareness is important. So, do you have any advice for teachers? Not only in terms of this explicit linguistic racism, but also in this implicit, you know, linguistic racism that probably they don't even are aware of and that they need to, I don't know, address somehow.

Sender
I think in eh, multicultural post-colonial contexts, like especially like, you know, English dominant speaking, multicultural context such as, Canada, USA Australia, UK, teachers have to be very, very aware about linguistic racism, because language is basically the expression and identity of that particular person. Right. And I think teachers, public school teachers, for example, they have been told, you know, to teach culturally appropriate sort of appropriate curriculum, you know, we have to be aware of the multilingualism and multiculturalism and so forth, but it is really not, you know, it's very superficial, I guess. It's just sort of like, you know, surface level really, but when it comes to, comes to these multicultural students in the classroom, our teachers need to be really aware, culturally aware, and also linguistically aware of all of these things happening, right. So, I mean, we as educators and we as teachers, we need to, we are the people who need to overcome linguistic racism, we need to identify linguistic racism, if it's happening in the classroom. We need to sort of you know, prevent it, prevent, or we also need to intervene, right. Intervention is also very important, I guess, to combat linguistic racism. So I guess means the starting point, I would say quickly, first of all, we really need to embrace the linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom. For example, if one student is, has a background, for example, I guess from India or China or Mongolia, you know, their students, their teachers, should embrace them and tell them you know, so you know, your background is India, that’s beautiful, can you tell us about your country? You know, can you please introduce yourself in your own language, we would really like to know about your language and, you know, that's a very, you know, good push to combat linguistic racism, you know? Yes, Kieran?

Kieran
Yeah. So, asking people about their backgrounds and countries certainly helps sort of bring bring, well sort of give respect and acknowledge that we come from different contexts. I'm curious about the whole idea of “Standard English”. If somebody is saying that, you know, this person doesn't speak standard English and it quite often. I find that quite an unhelpful thing. As far as I understand it. There really is no standard English outside of sort of written English. And so we could talk about academic English and the need for people for example, in higher level or higher education to be able to write to, to a certain standard and a certain way to the academy, but is there a is there any standard spoken English and, and where does the hierarchy of English just come in? We think of like the UK variety, the American variety, but we have lots of speakers in South Africa and New Zealand and Australia and Ireland, and like English as an additional language speakers all over the world, but their English isn't good enough. So who decides this and how do they do it?

Sender
Yeah. Part of the bigger picture of the linguistic racism, is basically the ideologies around Standard English right? Ideologies around
native-speakers of English. So in an Australian context, we have “Standard Australian English”, right? So Standard Australian English is sort of like. English. everybody needs to aspire, aspire. So you know, when the country Australia was first sort of you know, like when they were first when the the country first you know, became the country as Australia, Australian English well, that was actually considered as non-standard. You know, when Australian speak Australian English he was considered low class, you know, bogan English and all of that. And, you know, British English used to be sort of like standard English everybody needs to aspire to British English, but nowadays Australia has its own Standard Australian English, and everybody should speak Australian Standard Australian English so I guess, you know, English is the de facto language in Australia. So if you speak Standard Australian English, you're really good. You're powerful. You know, you can have an employment. If you can speak Standard Australian English, you have access to health care, you have access to education. Even renting, renting a house, you go and talk to a real estate agent. And if you present yourself in a very beautiful Standard Australian English, they're more likely to give you the house whereas you know, if your English is very non-standard, you know, unconventional if you have, if you speak different English, there is a possibility that you know, you're not going to have access to education, housing, employment standards, Australian English is sort of like, you know, the language we need to know really as part of that ideology is is quite discerning because, you know, it puts people it put people who speak different language as a second citizens really, you know,

Kieran
That, that, that ides, sorry, Natacha, just to follow up on the Standard Australian English. Of course, it's nonsense to say that everyone, like everyone in Australia speaks that standard English like I'd imagine very few people do. And in the same way, like there's a standard Irish English but there are people in my country who you would need subtitles for to understand their English, as there are in Scotland and in parts of England and in parts of the United States and these other countries that represent the standard so they themselves don't speak the standard. So it's more connected with whiteness, and privilege, and less with actual sort of country of origin that we say.

Sender
Exactly, exactly so it's part of the colonization, really, you know, the colonization, the bigger, bigger institutional colonization, we're having the whiteness, you know, the White Australia policy we had for a while. So, basically, if you're not Anglo Saxon background, English speaker, then you are different, right? You are different speakers. Whiteness is part of the intersectionality of the linguistic racism, especially Anglo-Saxons is the bigger sort of like, you know, more powerful privilege. So, language English users, right, so, yeah, it's all related to each other. Yeah.

Natacha
Yeah, it's very similar here and this brought us to, to our next set of questions because it's really similar in my experience, personal experiences like that. So, I'm working with refugee people who are all talking about the same, how difficult it is for them to get a job and to be respected, even if they are professionals and they have a huge background in terms of their careers, they, they don't, it's really difficult for them to find jobs and like, that are appropriate for them. So the next set of questions are related to this relationship with colonization and linguistic racism, right? Like there's two terms, how we can see the relationship of these two concepts, and how to decolonize. And because our audience is really interested here in how to decolonize the classroom, right? So, we would like to hear a little bit more about these two concepts and how you can articulate, you know, decolonization. You already started with this, but probably, if you want to add something related to how we can identify linguistic racism to decolonize our classrooms.

Sender
So obviously, I guess, colonization was basically built on racism, in my opinion, though in my opinion. So the part of the colonization is about, about the main concepts of the colonization is about superiority and inferiority, right. So the superiority of whiteness, white people, whiteness, English language, these are all sort of the colonization that happened when, when the settlers settlers for example, kind of came to North America or Australia, right and build their empire. Right. So, for me, in my opinion, the colonization was basically built on inequality, racism, and the legislations and practices were all based on you know, white whiteness. And in Australian context, it was White Australia Policy, right. So basically, the colonization what is saying is that one race is more civilized, more privileged, more powerful than the other race, right? So the culture we bring here is more civilized, the language we bring here, it's more powerful or more useful, and your race, your ethnicity, you know, you are second class, citizens, people, your language is not relevant here. So that's all colonization really. So, so I'm very happy that the discourses of decolonization decolonizing practices are emerging, you know, in recent years, and it's good and it needs to continue, you know, so the decol… I guess the linguistic racism is really, really directly related to the colonizing practice, right. So when we talk as I said, colonization was built on racism so linguistic racism was part of the conversation, what is linguistic racism? How is it related to colonization is very simple because you know, one language is more powerful and more useful than the other language. So your language is not useful. Your language is not you know, not powerful than our language. So, yes, yes, Kieran. You're raising your hand.

Kieran
I’m raising my hand here. I’m a good student, still! I’m just mindful of one of our Irish patriots had a saying in our language, he said, “tír gan teanga, tír gan anam”, meaning “a country without a language as a country without the soul” and just continuing what you're saying like this idea of colonialism, a large part of the colonial mission was to, eh, to eradicate the language of the locals of the natives. And then this is irony that once that's once, once that language has been destroyed, as part of destroying the culture, there then still considered second class citizens even though they're forced to adopt the language of the colonizer. So there's a sort of a lose-lose there, which makes the injustice doubly hard to swallow.

Sender
Yeah, I agree here and it's just, you know, the things. The way that happened is, it's got so many layers and layers and complexity, right? It's not that simple. Just to explain, this is what happened this is that but no, if you really look at it are lots of layers. Lots of models, you know, complex ideologies and practices that was sort of built into racism and colonization. Yeah, I mean, we have terms in my, in my field called linguistic imperialism, which were first you know, really sort of introduced by Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillips. And so what they're saying about linguistic Imperialism is, you know, English is dominating this world, right? So English is English and westernization or whiteness is sort of colonizing the whole world. So we really need to be careful about this. Because English is colonizing the world is trying to destroy other local languages. And you know, they call it linguistic imperialism, and what's the term also cultural imperialism comes together. What is cultural liberalism is, for example, Americanization. You know, Hollywoodization, I guess Cocacolonization, McDonaldization. This is all part of the Western cultural imperialism. And, you know, we need to be careful about that. So I guess, that those terms are also as part of the bigger picture of the colonization. I guess. Yeah.

Natacha
Yeah. And even when when you try to use the dominant language, you will never never never use it the same way. It's the same pattern with colonization, right? That even though you adopt all the Western behaviors, let's say, you will never be white, right. And it's why what Fanon says, right. Like white mask and black skin, right, like you will never be white, right. This is what happens in our contexts, right. Like we try to. No, no my case but but, you know, like in many contexts like Latin America, or I can imagine other spaces in which we try to westernize ourselves to be more educated, more integrated into society, but we will never be there because we're not white, right?

Sender
Exactly! That’s such an insider's, Natacha, that such a complex insider’s perspective, because we already we felt that we internalize that you know, we've been through that, even though your English is say like really proficient, really skilled, you know, you'll get all these high scores in IELTS and you write all these academic papers and all of that because you're not white your English will will always be stereotype. So in my paper in my latest book Translingual Discrimination by Cambridge University I talked a lot about this, why was the racism is also racism because it's a term called, okay, linguistic stereotyping. So, what is linguistic stereotyping is basically, you look at nonwhite people, non-white people speaking English, and that non-white people is the second generation of Australian they were born here. They were schooled here, they were educated here and they speak as as perfect as the white Australians. They have Standard Australian English so there's another another an Indian student who told me that as soon as you know, the local people speak to him, they tell him “your English is so good”. You know, "your English is so good, man. How did you learn English? You know, so good. Or sometimes we talked about the accent hallucination, which is, which is you know, as soon as they see the non-white people, they start sort of hallucinating foreign foreign language in their mind that it's actually scientifically proven because, in Ingrid Piller’s study at the university they played, you know, a Standard American English audio recording to the students. And then they showed showed two different people one is white, the white American and the other one is Asian Chinese, but the same recording and then ask students what did you hear in these two lectures? And then students said the Chinese looking lecturer, you know, her, her lecture was incomprehensible sometimes because, you know, we didn't understand what she was really trying to say, incomprehensible lecturer and you know, this is a linguistic stereotyping and hallucination whereas the American, white American student said, this is you know, powerful lecturer, we understood everything. So this is really related to the skin as well you know, when you when we're talking about language, so, all these little terms such as accent hallucination, linguistic stereotyping, as soon as you see a non-white person, you will assume our stereotype is English is not good.

Natacha
Yeah, same. Like, you know, analogy that I can find with this idea of White Masks Black Skin. Yeah. So any, you know, like if we address linguistic racism in classrooms, do you have, I don't know, any idea on how we can also contribute to decolonization? You know, like how to decolonize our language, how to make it more, you know, like not expecting for a standard kind of, or universal way of speaking, but like how we can be more open to different ways of expressions. I wonder if you have last thoughts regarding that.

Sender
I think, you know, decolonizing practice will take a lot of effort. It will take a lot of time, energy and effort. But, you know, it should continue to be the continuing discourse, especially for our younger generation for our students, you know, we need to make sure they understand what is decolonization? What is colonization, what is racism? They need to look at the past history, why people have been “word colonized”, why we are trying to decolonize in that way and so forth, and so school will play an important part of teachers and educators, school principals, they will play an important part, for example, to introduce school curriculum about decolonization, right? Have to decolonize for example, language or race and all of that. But not only that, I think the school principals and teachers and educators they also need to work with the parents parents of the students as well, because students, you know, they get a lot of education from household discipline, if parents are not doing anything about sort of like what is decolonization why you have to respect and treat that student differently. Or, for example, if the student is a Australian background English speaker, white student, the parents need to educate them you know, why their migrant-background friend in the classroom needs to be respected and all of that because kids you know, they can't really sort of know everything straight away. They’re children right, they need to be educated. So that's really important. Parents really need to work with teachers and you know, so that we can have that fundamental, solid foundation about decolonization. I mean, decolonization in my opinion, is basically writing back or basically speaking back against the ongoing colonialism and colonial mentality. Colonial mentality is very important because you've got this mentality and you expect everything happen, you know, based on your previous colonialism. So you for example, you are a native English speaker, so you expect to get that job because your English is, you know, Standard Australian English and that's the colonial mentality and we need to sort of dismantle that mentality, right. So in order to dismantle that it starts with the younger generation, they need to be educated because I guess the elder generation, it’s a bit different from our younger generation. So in my opinion, as a researcher and as an educator, I think we really need to work together, and also the teachers and educators and school principals. They also sort of need to, you know, they also sort of need to give more real voices to migrant background teachers, for example, my backup teachers, educators, they need to do the school principal job, for example, because they have such an insider's perspective. You know, they need to be working at policymaking decision making positions in the Department of Education. You know, we need a lot of migrants’ voices which is also to decolonize these practices as well. But these are all starting points, you know, I could go on and on. Yeah, so

Natacha
That's a great. Exactly like. Like what you said, like the way to decolonize is to give a voice to the actors right, to the people who are experiencing these discriminations and this, you know, barriers from society. So if we don't hear them, so how we can, you know, start with decolonizing whatever context? And and it reminds me when I was working with Chinese young people that they are bringing their Mandarin back just as a way to, because it's the second generation Chinese. So it's like you say, like they speak English, many of them are not speaking their language anymore and then they were like aware of it and they are trying to bring this as a way of activism. And it's something that is happening also, I think in Los Angeles with Spanish speaker, second language generation. That they lost the Spanish and then they are trying to bring it back as a way to be present in society. So it's a kind of activism or activist way, even though they speak the language perfectly, they really want to bring their language back.

Sender
Absolutely. That's one of the great activisms to, not decompose, sorry, to decolonize. Kieran?

Kieran
Yeah, I'm wondering I'm just thinking about that, middle ground there. I'm certainly all for bringing languages back. It's a great pity of mine that I don't speak on my own native Irish as well as I would like. I'm wondering as well though, I'll go with this question. Like in terms of covert prestige as a socio linguistic phenomenon, is there a sort of potential for encouraging people to speak more of a non-standard English and to encourage that and to sort of force the force legitimacy of that and to sort of attack the standard by embracing the non-standard, I guess, people do this naturally at certain ages and certain demographics, but it's not encouraged, I guess. So to make the covert prestige more overt I guess. Yeah.

Sender
Yeah. Um, I guess, also in one of my papers, in the implication, I did write about, you know, sort of empowering these people, you know, to speak, how they speak basically do have accent habits. Right? If you if you accept these people, and if you encourage these people to speak up, they speak obviously, first of all the mental health well being will be you know, improved in order the inferiority complexes will be gone, and then they feel more accepted. So the social integration, linguistic integration will be more successful in terms of multicultural contexts. And you know, just just sort of like encouraging someone to speak how they speak is a very empowering act, I guess, you know, they, you know, encouraging, for example, in the classroom contexts. You know, I always sort of write in my papers as an implication, you know, you need we need to sort of encourage our students to speak up, you know, we really need to encourage our students just to speak in the classroom, but it doesn't matter whether it's non-standard English, it doesn't matter. Its Standard Australian English. It doesn't even matter if there's going to use another language, for example, Chinese or, you know, Mongolian in the classroom, because it's only encouraging that communication and inclusion, and all of this decolonizing practices we're talking about. Yeah, yeah.

Kieran
Sorry, just on that. I'm excited about what you're saying. I'm all for that, too. I mean, people speaking how to speak. I see it as a wonderful opportunity for, for cross pollination sort of for my language background. I mean, we're conscious that a lot of English words, we borrow words from German and French and certain cultures, and less from other cultures perhaps, and cultures around the world have wonderful words that we could certainly adopt, but they're excluded. Right, because of the people who use those words. So I think it's like, yeah, let people speak how they speak. And I'm like, “what does that mean? Oh, that's cool. I'm gonna start using that too.”

Sender
Yeah, that's really sort of, you know, empowering. You know, it's empowering for both speakers, you know? So, another speaker is sort of like, you know, feeling empowered. Because their language is being sort of, you know, being valued right, various the other speakers are getting educated, you know, getting education from another totally different culture, right. And all of that is very empowering experience. It's very easy to actually practice that in the classroom. We can have a little tasks you know, you know, task based activities, and then just encourage our teachers how about, you know, today we can learn about this culture and, you know, you know, what this culture says these words in that way and all of that and that's a very interesting sort of past based activity to encourage inclusion in my opinion, you know, and also we need to also remember that English has not been English like present English like Shakespearian English was completely different right Shakespeare in English. Oh, look at it the Romeo Juliet and all of that some of them we don't really understand. You know, there's a completely different English and now the modern English is so different as well from the Shakespearean English. So, as linguists we say that language is always transforming, language is always you know, reforming based on that particular social linguistic history of politics and all of that, you know, so language we could never, ever sort of like, you know, stick to just one pure language, you know, linguistic purity is actually not not going to happen because it's all about the diversity, the linguistic diversity, which is all included in that particular language or culture. For example, you're talking about English now, English was a lot of words from Japan, you know, sushi, sake, or all of that. It's almost part of the English words now so. Yeah.

Kieran
I'm worry, just thinking like, like, who are the gatekeepers in terms of what words. like, if we have a standard, like it's not like the French system. Obviously, where there is like an academy, but in English, like, is it just cultural trends? I guess it's the media, particular parts of the media that are promoting whatever is the flavor of the day or whatever. I'm also thinking in terms of introducing words, like in my country, for example, there were not so many restaurants shall we say serving food from all parts of the world. And now we have that and I'm saying that like the sort of same thing could be done with, with English. It's, it's, it's another part of the lived experience, language and food have so much of an impact on who we are and, where we, where we come from and on our own culture.

Sender
Well, obviously, you mentioned that media plays an important part in terms of spreading all these new types of expressions and new types of you know, linguistic mixtures, and all of that, but we need some kind of a gatekeeper who's going to standardize that and obviously the media is not gonna officially standardize that right, but I guess, you know, universities for example, Oxford University Press dictionary, right, new 2023 dictionary, so they're kind of standardized, they decide that okay, we're going to use this, you know, sushi as part of the English language now, so we'll just put it into the dictionary. Now, if it's an unwritten dictionary, sort of standard English.

Kieran
Do you see that the Urban Dictionary much I refer to it fairly regularly, and see that, it’s a brilliant thing, because that's the language people actually speak. By the time we get to the dictionary two years old?

Sender
Yes, I know. So I do check that, urban Urban Dictionary’s online right. So if I come up with these new words that I don't understand that young people are using are not only young people, popular words in the media, I definitely use that. But it takes ages for really to get standardized by dictionary, obviously, you know, linguists are involved policymakers are involved. Government officials are involved in all that.

Kieran
Make the Urban Dictionary the official reference text and see what happens…

Sender
Now that is decolonizing!

Kieran
Dr. Dovchin, we’re conscious of your time here, we're going to be wrapping up. Natacha, do you have any final questions or thoughts or comments?

Natacha
My thought is, you know, that since you're talking about empowering, and since I discovered this term, discover your work, you know, I started to connect it with my work and the people who I’m working with, I feel more empowered actually. I mean, I was like yeah, why I'm not using it more, right. Like, for example, simple questions in the supermarket and you become shy because you don't want to express yourself because you don't want this reaction from people, right. So if you have a question in a public, in a public site, then you can’t say whatever because you feel intimidated by that. But since I'm working on it, I am feeling totally empowered to do that. Now, I'm really glad that we found you and you're working so hard in this activist academic work, it's really inspiring and thank you so much for, for joining us.

Sender
Thank you so much for inviting me. It was pleasure talking to you, you to really raise some very interesting, you know, new sort of perspectives that I have never thought about it before as well. Right. So thank you also for giving me more new sort of ways to think about our alternative ways to think about language and linguistic racism. And as you said, Natacha when I first moved to Australia, I'm also a migrant background academic in Australia. I came to Australia as an international student. I have a Mongolian background, right. I started as an international student I totally felt so inferior. You know, I had this strong positive image, some strong positive like imagination about Australia. I was so excited, right? So I thought, oh, people will be so accepting. I'm going to improve my English, you know, I will make a lot of friends and I just went so excited. I was so young as well. And then as soon as they came to Australia, it starts from the airport, you start talking to the customer, customs officer, and they just blurt out something in English and I can't understand what did you say you know, my kind of English is so different from Australian English. And then this is how I started feeling really inferior, you know, and internalize all of that, and then I go to the grocery shop, and then the grocery shop assistant will tell me something I don't know, do you have Fly-Bys card and I don't know what is Fly-Bys card, you know, with a very heavy accent and all of that, and then you go to the classroom, it's a different story. And then you accumulate all of this sort of small I call it like micro traumas, you know, it's not a big trauma that you said, I can relate to micro traumas related to your language in relation to your race and how people treat you and then one day it becomes huge. Your mental health is in jeopardy, you know? So and then. This is actually my research on linguistic racism is also based on my own own personal experience as a migrant, you know, so it's a very personal I know, I know, this happened to me. And then as soon as I started working in this space, as you said, I started feeling very empowered because I could talk to people what I researched about, you know, I could communicate with people I could even talk to policymakers, teachers. Educators, and all of that and makes me feel really empowered. So I agree with you and thanks for inviting me again.

Natacha
Thank you, thank you for the work you're doing and you will be inspiring also for many teachers and people who, who need a word to express what they are feeling. You know like, that's what happened was to me that well, that's exactly what I'm felling it right. And I didn't have the words to to articulate it. Kieran, you have something to add?

Kieran
No, that's all. Thank you very much adoption. It's wonderful to speak with you. I hope we might speak a little bit down the line and as we said our purpose is to maybe, get more conversations like this happening at our institution and, and across institutions in Canada. So yeah, hopefully our paths will cross again in the future. Thank you for your time. Thank you.