35.3511, Review: Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics; Decolonizing Linguistics: Rohmer (2024)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-3511. Tue Dec 10 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.3511, Review: Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics; Decolonizing Linguistics: Rohmer (2024)

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Date: 10-Dec-2024
From: Monika Rohmer [monika.rohmer at uni-bayreuth.de]
Subject: Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics; Decolonizing Linguistics: Rohmer (2024)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.2272

AUTHOR: Anne H. Charity Hudley
AUTHOR: Christine Mallinson
AUTHOR: Mary Bucholtz
TITLE: Decolonizing Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2024

REVIEWER: Monika Rohmer

SUMMARY

The edited volume “Decolonizing Linguistics” provides the reader with
500 pages of written text. Throughout the volume, colonial or
colonizing linguistics is marked by certain traits including
domination, extraction, exclusion, isolation, and false claims to
objectivity. Therefore, decolonizing linguistics means to bond, meet,
exchange, work for communities, include marginalized voices, and make
transparent one’s own positionality.

In addition to Introduction and Conclusion, the editors, Anne H.
Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson and Mary Bucholtz, gathered 20
topical chapters. Orientation is provided by grouping the chapters
into three parts. Part 1 focuses on decolonizing linguistics as an
academic discipline. Decolonizing in this dimension means taking steps
towards a fully inclusive, equitable, and just linguistics. Guiding
principles include responding to the local and the particular and
critically reflecting on the past and present. Part 2 focuses on
decolonizing methods, giving concrete examples of intersecting
teaching and research. Part 3 centers on community and activism. The
chapters propose models of linguistic research that humanize both
researchers and language users, in order to strengthen communities.

For the editors, conversation is one of the means of decolonizing
linguistics. This grounding of decolonization is reflected in the
editorial process: “We intentionally used an inclusive process of
development, workshopping, and revision of chapters, which we adopted
in deliberate contrast to the traditional paradigm of scholarly
writing, editing, revision, and anonymous critique that is often
isolated and isolating, as well as susceptible to processes of
injustice and exclusion.” (4) Instead of a blind peer-review system,
drafts are discussed and enhanced jointly. Group authorship, processes
of group review, and joint discussions are elements of such a
decolonized editorial process.

“Decolonizing Linguistics” is meant to lead academia at large towards
decolonizing action. The book addresses individual scholars of
linguistics as well as institutions to take responsibility in working
towards a decolonized future (445). It could be described as a
decolonization manual for professionals.
The volume is part of a larger project including a second volume
“Inclusion in Linguistics” and a website offering not only author
bios, but also teaching materials.


EVALUATION

The volume testifies to a project that grew beyond its initial idea.
The seed initially planted by the editors Anne H. Charity Hudley,
Christine Mallinson and Mary Bucholtz grew into a network of personal
human relations, academic activism, and critical reflections. Through
conversations and collaborations, the volume encourages readers to
start decolonizing linguistics, taking as a point of departure an
acknowledgement of one’s own positionality and context.
A first indicator that the project grew beyond first intentions is
that two edited volumes are offered, “Decolonizing Linguistics” and
“Inclusion in Linguistics,” and a website displaying not only author
bios, but also teaching materials.

A second indicator is the inclusion of Ignacio L. Montoya into the
conversation on Decolonizing Linguistics. While the three editors,
Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz, introduce the volume with a Preface
in which they spell out their respective positionalities, Montoya
co-authors Introduction and Conclusion. Montoya’s focus on Indigenous
languages is a crucial perspective in decolonization. It adds to Anne
H. Charity Hudley’s focus on Black learners, Christine Mallinson’s
focus on power dynamics and her critique of “false binaries and the
boundary-setting culture of academia” (xiv), and Mary Bucholtz’s
persistence in staying in hostile academic environments, focusing on
race, gender, and youth identity.

Conversation is a tool to decolonize linguistics. To decolonize means
for the editors to engage in conversations with colleagues,
communities, families, and students. These conversations must span
across disciplines and geographical spaces. This grounding of
decolonization is reflected in the conversational editorial process,
in which feedback is given in workshop format. This process is
purposefully communal and transparent (4). I felicitate this justified
critique and active application of decolonization. For me, this
approach is groundbreaking and invites a new self-conception in
academia. I suggest that the website could provide even more
information on this multifaceted process, shedding light on potential
limits and pitfalls of this approach. It would be interesting to learn
more about the collaboration in a team of up to ten authors.

Even though the variety of topics and positions may at times be
overwhelming, this variety is exactly the strength of the volume. Any
reader will find a starting point for their personal journey toward
decolonizing linguistics. In line with the volume’s proposition, I
want to share insights into my positionality to explain my comments
and evaluations. I am a German researcher of African languages. I am
interested in topics ranging from political philosophy to human-nature
interactions, from decolonization of higher education to semantics,
from cognition to embodiment. I lived in Senegal and compared Wolof
and French conceptualizations of water on the Senegalese coast for my
PhD research.

My personal starting point for Part 1 was Maya Angela Smith’s Chapter
7, “Centering Race and Multilingualism in French Linguistics”. As a
second-language learner of French, I can relate to the alienation from
French academia which Smith describes. I was curious to learn about
her perspective on Senegalese migrants and I appreciate Smith’s
translanguaging focus article. However, the absence of examples from
Wolof or Pulaar, spoken and used within the Senegalese diaspora, left
me puzzled.

Regarding Part 2, I genuinely enjoyed Chapter 11, “Towards a
Decolonial Syntax: Research, Teaching, Publishing”, written by Hannah
Gibson, Kyle Jerro, Savithry Namboodiripad and Kristina Riedel. The
authors encourage syntacticians to work against the colonial legacies
of their field. They criticize monolingualism, the exclusion of
‘extralinguistic’ factors, and the fact that “the ‘disembodied
language’ remains the central object of study in many dominant
approaches to syntax” (230). They invite questions like: “Who is given
authority to provide judgements or have their language use analyzed?”
(232) They further introduce aspects of citation practices, including
an overrepresentation of non-African researchers publishing about
African languages. Like the authors, I would hope to see more detailed
analysis of citation patterns soon.

I am still reflecting on the Ticha Project, described in Part 3 of the
volume, and implications for my research. May Helena Plumb, Alejandra
Dubcovsky, Moisés García Guzmán, Brook Danielle Lillehaugen and Felipe
H. Lopez put decolonization into practice in Chapter 16 “Growing a
Bigger Linguistics Through a Zapotec Agenda: The Ticha Project”.
Decolonization refers to centering the community, to building on
community-driven digital scholarship. The authors make transparent the
partnerships, historicities and implications of their project. They
invite other projects to follow the Zapotec agenda, driven and shaped
by the concerned communities. This chapter provides an example of
community-driven scholarship which refuses academic isolationism.
Rather than conclude with a fixed framework, the chapter provides the
reader with questions to evaluate and enlarge one’s own research and
inspire decolonial communities of scholars.

These preceding paragraphs illustrate the broad range of topics
covered. Linguists (in the broadest sense) will indeed find their
individual starting point. Despite the explicit focus on the scholarly
community, I see the book also as a teaching device. For me, the
volume provides a great toolbox for lecturers in US academia to bring
decolonizing, exclusion, racism, and other related topics to the
table. The volume shows that decolonization is not a question for
others out there, but concerns our own fields, positionalities,
locations, and hierarchical positionings. For scholars, it is an
interesting supplement to other literature on decolonization, bringing
up new aspects and questions. For them, the dialogical format and the
questions raised will be of value in drafting their own research
projects and curricula. The chapters, however, vary in length, depth,
and approach. As an Afrikanist situated in German academia, I require
other supplementary reading to find my decolonial approach.

The edited volume “Decolonizing Linguistics” is not the first of its
kind. Similar endeavors include for instance “Decolonial Voices,
Language and Race” (2022), edited by Sinfree Makoni, Magda Madany-Saá,
Bassey E. Antia, and Rafael Lomeu Gomes, or “Colonial and Decolonial
Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes” (2020), edited by Ana Deumert,
Anne Storch and Nick Shepherd. Nonetheless, Hudley, Mallinson, and
Bucholtz fill a gap, with an expanded focus on the Americas and the
varied forms of exclusion in US academia. However, this should be
accompanied by critical investigations. What could and should be the
role of the US academy – as other institutions of the global North –
in decolonizing efforts?

Borrowing methodologically from the volume, I want to conclude with
questions. These are meant as suggestions to develop this project of
decolonization even further:
-           In the volume, decolonization means to enable a fully
inclusive linguistics. Decolonization allows for the second volume:
inclusion. Could stretching the term decolonization this far limit its
value as a political concept? Shouldn’t we distinguish types of
colonial exclusion from other types of exclusion not rooted in
colonialism, for instance ableism practiced within an Indigenous
community?
-           Isn’t the linguistic repertoire of researchers crucial in
the positionality of linguistics researchers in language?
-           Where do we distinguish language from languaging or
translanguaging? How can we acknowledge local and global varieties of
speaking? Can we think of non-exclusionary forms of distinction?
-           Isn’t the centrality of English in decolonization debates
exclusionary itself? I wished to see critical reflection about
English as the lingua franca of the global academic conversation. For
many scholars, English being a prerequisite for academic conversations
is an exclusionary mechanism. The dominance of English is a colonial
heritage and continues to divide humans along colonial lines. In my
view, we must acknowledge and fight it. In continuing the project, I
hope to see more attention given to languaging experiences without
centering the English language.

REFERENCES

Deumert, Ana, Anne Storch & Nick Shepherd (eds). 2020. “Colonial and
Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Makoni, Sinfree, Magda Madany-Saá, Bassey E. Antia & Rafael Lomeu
Gomes (eds). 2022. Decolonial Voices, Language and Race. Global Forum
on Southern Epistemologies 1. Bristol, Jackson: Multilingual Matters.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Monika Christine Rohmer is a postdoctoral researcher within the
project ‘Philosophizing in a Globalized World’ at the University of
Hildesheim. In her PhD, she compared discourses of water in Wolof and
French in Senegal. Monika is a transdisciplinary scholar combining
applied linguistics, ecolinguistics, intercultural philosophy, the
study of verbal arts, and postcolonial theories. Her regional focus is
West Africa, with a language focus on Hausa, Pulaar and Wolof. She was
employed as assistant to the chairs of Afrikanistik II and African and
Afrophone Philosophies at the University of Bayreuth. Before obtaining
her MA in African Verbal and Visual Arts in Bayreuth, she majored in
Political Science in her undergraduate at Leipzig University.



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