Humans are remarkably efficient at parsing basic linguistic cues and show an equally impressive ability to produce and parse socially indexed cues from the language(s) they encounter. In this review, we focus on the ways in which questions of justice and equality are linked to these two abilities. We discuss how social and linguistic cues are theorized to become correlated with each other, describe listeners' perceptual abilities regarding linguistic and social cognition, and address how, in the context of these abilities, language mediates individuals’ negotiations with institutions and their agents—negotiations that often lead to discrimination or linguistic injustice. We review research that reports inequitable outcomes as a function of language use across education, employment, media, justice systems, housing markets, and health care institutions. Finally, we present paths forward for linguists to help fight against these discriminatory realities.

1 Understanding social justice as it relates to linguistic discrimination and identity requires consideration of both production and perception. As linguists and cognitive psychologists become more attuned to talking about social justice, the need to discuss linguistic human behaviors through a sociocognitive lens becomes more pertinent than ever. This article offers a sociocognitive approach to linguistic analysis as a means to combat linguistic discrimination in the pursuit of social justice. Having negative ideologies about a particular group of people, especially a minoritized group, influences linguistic prediction and perceptions. Together, sociolinguistic and psychological methodologies are necessary to navigate a world in which people use linguistic knowledge to make decisions and predictions about their interlocutors. I use sociocognitive approaches as vehicles for social justice, centering African American English and Anti-Black Racism. The limited existing sociocognitive linguistic research indicates that listeners may modulate their linguistic expectations during cognitive processing based on speaker identity and stereotypes of speakers. As linguistic discrimination is ever-present in U.S. society, in addition to describing sociocognitive solutions, this article also represents a call to action for researchers to empirically test ideological claims about linguistic varieties that are passively accepted, strengthen replicability, and broaden approaches to the study of minoritized varieties more generally. Hopefully, this article will inspire linguistics researchers to consider all factors, cognitive and social, related to linguistic perception, further contributing to a greater understanding of how to combat linguistic discrimination from a multidimensional frame.

There is a consensus in psycholinguistic research that listening to unfamiliar speech constitutes a challenging listening situation. In this commentary, we explore the problems with the construct of non-native and ask whether using this construct in research is useful, specifically to shift the communicative burden from the language learner to the perceiver, who often occupies a position of power. We examine what factors affect perception of non-native talkers. We frame this question by addressing the observation that not all “difficult” listening conditions provide equal challenges. Given this, we ask how cognitive and social factors impact perception of unfamiliar accents and ask what our psycholinguistic measurements are capturing. We close by making recommendations for future work. We propose that the issue is less with the terminology of native versus non-native, but rather how our unexamined biases affect the methodological assumptions that we make. We propose that we can use the existing dichotomy to create research programs that focus on teaching perceivers to better understand talkers more generally. Finally, we call on perceivers and researchers alike to question the idea of speech being “native,” “non-native,” “unfamiliar,” and “accented” to better align with reality as opposed to our inherently biased views.

A key challenge for any academic field is using, and teaching about, field-specific terminology. Speech science faces a unique set of circumstances, since many students and non-experts believe they understand a specific term. However, their definitions may vary drastically from the agreed upon definitions within the field. This becomes even more complicated when a specific piece of terminology is contentious within the field. Take, for example, the term “non-native.” Recent work has demonstrated that this term is simultaneously imprecise (i.e., does not refer to all and only individuals who meet specific criteria) and othering (i.e., inherently places one group in opposition to the “normal” group of native speakers). However, this terminological conundrum provides a ripe ground for pedagogical shift. In this presentation, we address both the pedagogical opportunities available in addressing these terminological issues, including metalinguistic discussions of the notions of categories and how this may tie into discussions around linguistic relativity. Furthermore, this approach allows for a broader discussion in the classroom that changing terminology only solves part of the problem; regardless of the terminology we use, we do not mitigate the bigger issues of interest. In fact, altering terminology alone can result in virtue-signaling (miles-hercules & Muwwakkil 2021).

There are multiple factors that contribute to how humans perceive social cues from the speech signal, specifically, cues relating to gender and race. This project sought to find what attributes of the speech signal allow humans to differentiate between speakers across different genders and varieties of American English. To answer this question, 2719 recordings of cis-men and cis women’s voices, speaking in AAE (African-American English) and SdAE (Standardized American English) were analyzed. Machine learning methods were applied through WEBMaus, as opposed to Praat, MFA, and FAVE Align, to investigate the relationship between formants and the target variable (gender/English variety). The selection of formants as the focus of study was based upon pre-existing research affirming formants as a source of differentiation between men/women, and AAE/SdAE. Results of this study showed that formants have a minimal impact on perceiving social cues in speech according to WEBMaus. This research encourages further inquiry into other attributes of the speech signal, such as pitch or intensity, for discerning race and gender in the acoustic signal.