Identifying, understanding, and supporting diverse first-generation scholars in linguistics

Abstract

One in three college graduates is in the first generation of their family to complete a bachelor’s degree (NCES 2016), including 27% of doctoral students (CGS 2022) and 28% of tenure-track faculty (Morgan et al. 2022). Although there exists ample diversity of perspective and experience among first-generation students, relative to continuing-generation students, they are more likely to work full-time, care for dependents, and/or contribute to the income of their households. They are also more likely to be older, lower-income, racially minoritized, and to have graduated from community colleges. These factors provide first-generation linguists with unique forms of cultural and symbolic capital that often go undervalued in academia. We demonstrate how faculty can establish effective and nurturing mentoring relationships with first-generation students, how first-generation graduate students and faculty can maintain a work-life balance, and how to use tailor-made case studies to increase the visibility of generation-based educational inequity. Our perspective emphasizes structural barriers over individual shortcomings and uplifts first-generation voices in a variety of academic roles and institutional contexts within linguistics and allied disciplines.