Affiliation:
1. Departamento de Filología Inglesa , Universidad Autónoma de Madrid , Madrid , Spain
Abstract
Abstract
Language ideologies are a powerful way of perpetuating inequalities, as peripheralized speakers who have internalized the lack of legitimacy attributed to them often end up reproducing censure rather than resisting it. Foregrounding the affective dimension, this paper explores the role of shame as a fulcrum articulating the individual with the collective in the perpetuation of linguistic stigma. To do so, it presents excerpts of autobiographies written by university students that reveal the impact of language idealization on the subjectivities of those who, by deviating from the norm, forge subaltern identities. As victims of language shaming are often unaware that their suffering is due to ideologies, but instead blame it on personal failings, rather than challenge the linguistic vigilantes who harass them, they silence themselves. The paper discusses how the inherently social nature of the construction of otherness and stigma is obscured by the individuality of shame and presents an educational intervention with which to scaffold students to overcome language shame.
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Communication,Language and Linguistics
Reference91 articles.
1. Ahearn, Laura M. 2010. Agency and language. In Jürgen Jaspers, Jef Verschueren & Jan-Ola Östman (eds.), Society and language use, 28–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2. Ahmed, Sara. 2015. The cultural politics of emotion, 2nd edn. London/New York: Routledge.
3. Alim, H. Samy, John R. Rickford & Arnetha F. Ball (eds.). 2016. Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. Baker-Bell, April. 2020. Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. London/New York: Routledge.
5. Banville, Morgan C. & Jason Sugg. 2021. Challenging surveillance: Linguistic justice in the college classroom. In Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 33–38. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9793429.