Linguistic racism explores the varied ideologies that may generate and endorse monolingual, native, and normative language practices, while reinforcing the discrimination and injustice directed towards language users whose language and communicative repertoires are not necessarily perceived as standard and normal. This article, thus, investigates linguistic racism, as a form of existing, but newly defined, racism against unconventional ethnic language practices experienced by Eastern-European immigrant women in the Australian workplace. Our ethnographic study shows that, once these women directly or subtly exhibit their non-nativism, through a limited encounter with local expressions, non-native language skills, and ethnic accents, they become victims of covert and overt linguistic racism in the form of social exclusion, mockery, mimicking, and malicious sarcasm in the hierarchical power environment of the workplace. As a result, these migrants can suffer from long-lasting psychological trauma and distress, emotional hurdles, loss of credibility, and language-based inferiority complexes. We, as researchers, need to highlight the importance of combatting workplace linguistic racism and revealing language realities of underprivileged communities. In that way, we can assist them in adapting to host societies and help them regain some degree of power equality in their institutional environments.
Translingual identity, as a part of the trans-paradigm, refers to linguistic, sociocultural, ethno-racial, and religious practices, which are negotiable, fluid, and in motion, transcending mainstream boundaries. This paper expands the translingual literature from the perspective of sociolinguistic disparities of culturally and linguistically diverse Eastern-European immigrant women in Australia, as they become victims of the perpetual foreigner stereotype in their host communities. Using the linguistic ethnography methods, such as open ethnographic observation and semi-structured interview, the study reveals that due to biographical accent, name, and the country of origin, as aspects of translingual identity – Australian-by-passport, those women become the victim of the perpetual foreigner stereotypes, such as ‘perceived as different’ and ‘Russian bride,’ which led to their feelings of inferiority and social inequality. By expanding the scope of the translingual identity and how it is perceived in Australia, this study provides a necessary contribution to the translingual literature, while simultaneously advocating for the quality of life and justice for translingual immigrants in their new home.
English is taught as a foreign language in elementary and high schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). However, since the number of English classes per week is very limited they should be utilized in the best possible way to produce proficient users of English. Nowadays, when language proficiency is viewed as one's ability to speak and write in the target language and not about it, the need for the proficiency evaluation in schools arises. The present study attempts to shed a spot of light on this issue, investigating two very common ways of assessing students' knowledge in schools, namely tests and writing assignments. Hence, through the interviews with English teachers and the analysis of students' tests and writing assignments, the current paper explores the ways in which these two measures are realized, the tasks they consist of, the type of linguistic knowledge they are used to evaluate, their levels of difficulty, and the type of corrective feedback teachers provide on both of them. The results suggest that teachers on both measure rather students' explicit than their implicit knowledge, focusing much more on accuracy than fluency development.
Drawing on ethnographic interview analysis of Aboriginal participants in Australia, this study seeks to expand the critical discussions in Applied Linguistics by understanding the concept of translanguaging in relation to its “mundanity” (or ordinariness). Our data shows that rather than perceiving translanguaging as extraordinary, for Aboriginal speakers it is more likely to be considered normal, unremarkable, mundane, and as a long-existing phenomenon. The concept of the mundanity of translanguaging is thereby expanded through three main discussions in this article: 1) negotiating identity and resisting racism, where the Aboriginal speakers choose to translanguage using their full linguistic repertoires, but with appropriate communicative adjustments made for their interlocutor; 2) a display of respect towards their land, heritage and language; and 3) as an inherent and mundane everyday practice where they constantly negotiate between heritage languages, English, Kriol, and Aboriginal English varieties. The significance of this study lies in the normalisation of translanguaging as a mundane disinvention strategy, as this urges us to perceive linguistic separateness as a colonial ideological construct that is used to exhibit control over diverse peoples and to maintain uniformity and stability of nation-states.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.