[lg policy] The Link Between Race and Language: Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race

[Harold Schiffman]

 The Link Between Race and Language: Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like
a Race

By Sierra Lemelle <http://thewestgeorgian.com/author/h-sigler/> in Living
West <http://thewestgeorgian.com/category/living-west/>, News
<http://thewestgeorgian.com/category/news/> on March 30, 2018 / no comments
<http://thewestgeorgian.com/the-link-between-race-and-language-looking-like-a-language-sounding-like-a-race/#commentspost>

Photo Credit Sierra Lemelle

Beyond a method of communication, language is a cultural aspect that shapes
identity. The Department of Anthropology hosted Dr. Jonathan Rosa,
assistant professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, to discuss his new
book *Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race*. He reveals the
central role that language has in shaping ideas about race as a social
construct and an important social reality. This relationship between race,
language and racism is a part of the foundation for reflecting and defining
the way human societies are structured.

        Rosa challenges distinctions between race and ethnicity in Latinx,
a gender non-binary way of referring to ‘Latina/o’, culture and argues that
the racialization of Latinx language requires consideration of race. He
coined the term “languagelessness” to define linguistic competence and
legitimate personhood to examine the association it has with the ideology
of language standardization. Languagelessness stigmatizes specific
linguistic practices that differs from the established norm.

        Rosa explains the relationship between race, language and racism as
a term called “raciolinguistics”. Rosa’s raciolinguistics perspective
examines the categories of race, ethnicity and language as products of
colonial distinctions. Rosa analyzes the U.S. as a fundamentally racist
society built on colonialism and slavery that has led to the continuation
of white supremacy in institutions such as public schools being reproduced.
He explores this structural inequality in urban contexts by collaborating
with local communities.

Photo Credit: Sierra Lemelle

        “In a post 1965 moment in the United States the Civil Rights Act
and various other forms of legislation have guaranteed equal rights yet we
see profound disparities, racial disparities among other forms of disparity
that persist despite the legal changes that have taken place,” said Rosa.
“Ideas about language come from profound sites of reproduction of
inequality.”

        Rosa drew on ethnographic data collected within a predominantly
Latinx high school, institutional policies and scholarly conceptions of
language. These sources point out the racialized ways that ideologies of
language standardization and languagelessness relate in theory, policy and
everyday interactions. Bilingualism is shown as a handicap in public
schools and multilingual communities as linguistically isolated in the U.S.
Census.

        Any racialized group can be linguistically stigmatized with
ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness. Even if a
group is not yet racialized, it could become racialized through these
ideological and institutional processes.

        “In order to disrupt the linguistic reproduction of radicalization
and socioeconomic stratification, we must move beyond asserting the
legitimacy of stigmatized language practices,” said Rosa. “Focusing instead
on interrogating the societal reproduction of listening subject positions
that continually perceive deficiency. By changing our analytical strategy
in this way, we can gain new insights into how the joint ideological
construction of race, class and language perpetuates inequality.”


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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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