Linguistics in a colonial world: a story of language, meaning, and power – By Joseph Errington

Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to epistemological racism (Kubota 2020) in the discipline of Linguistic Anthropology, which I argue institutionalizes and reproduces white supremacy. I extend Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, which examines the co‐naturalization of race and language, to the co‐naturalization of race and language scholars. Through a critical analysis of the hegemony of the “white linguistic anthropologist,” I demonstrate how BIPOC linguistic anthropologists are expected to assimilate to a white normative culture of producing, disseminating, and evaluating anthropological knowledge. Employing ideas from Indigenous research methodologies such as the notion of relational accountability and related “R’s” such as respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and rights; the framework of Radical Indigenism (Garroutte 2003), which argues for research praxis based on Indigenous philosophies of knowledge; and Felt Theory (Million 2009), which asserts the validity of knowledge emerging from experiences that are felt; I offer alternatives that are grounded in Indigenous research principles and protocols. I conclude by outlining a reimagined discipline, a linguistic anthropology built from Indigenous epistemologies and norms of relational knowledge production, and discuss the anti‐racist praxis that such a transformation could facilitate.

Section: Themes Of Indigenous Approaches To Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an Anti‐Racist Linguistic Anthropology: An Indigenous Response to White Supremacy

Leonard

2021

“…This R-number shows the discipline of linguistics to be within a chronic state of anti-Blackness. From its colonizing (Errington 2008;Irvine 2008), to current extractive research on Black and other racialized communities (Charity Hudley et al 2020;Rickford 1997), linguistics objectifies and commodifies Blackness. This longstanding practice lays bare anti-Black racism as a system for expropriating resources and capturing value from Black bodies and voices.…”

Section: How To Spot An Outbreakmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This R‐number shows the discipline of linguistics to be within a chronic state of anti‐Blackness. From its colonizing (Errington 2008; Irvine 2008), to current extractive research on Black and other racialized communities (Charity Hudley et al. 2020; Rickford 1997), linguistics objectifies and commodifies Blackness.…”

Section: How To Spot An Outbreakmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal Protective Equipment Against Anti‐Blackness: Communicability and Contagion in the Academy

Thomas

Bucholtz

2021

A lethal infectious disease is among us. Alarmingly, the disease burden’s distribution is strikingly unequal. White subjects have a far greater viral load, particularly because of noncompliance with public health guidelines. Yet the virus has a much more harmful impact on Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) populations, which are vulnerable due to structural inequities. The disease is commonly transmitted through talk: The more forcefully an infected individual speaks, the greater the viral shedding of virus‐containing droplets or aerosolized particles; vitriolic political rallies and violent, seditious activities are especially dangerous. However, these widely publicized flare‐ups often overshadow the everyday chronic form of infection, which is even more insidious because it is endemic to the white population and therefore less recognized. therefore less recognized.

“…(1) Reconsider the practice of making Black and Native people known/knowable objects of study (by non-Black and non-Native people) and consider how the dis/ re/possession and dissection of Black and Native American languages and discursive practices is always explicitly tied to the literal dis/re/possession and dissection of Black and Native American bodies and land (Davis 2017;Perley 2012). That is to say, the dispossessing work of much linguistic anthropological scholarship of taking, examining, and knowing/owning works alongside colonial/anti-Black/white structures of violence that take, and often desecrate, Black and Native bodies, artifacts, and lands (via other sciences, policies, and everyday practice) (Kroskrity 2013(Kroskrity , 2018Errington 2008).…”

Section: Dis/possession Afoot: American (Anthropological) Traditions ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dis/possession Afoot: American (Anthropological) Traditions of Anti‐Blackness and Coloniality

Davis

Smalls

2021

In this essay, we call on linguistic anthropology to combat specific modes of White Supremacy (anti‐Blackness, anti‐Indigeneity, and anti‐Nativeness) by recognizing them as intimately central to the formations and formulations of our (sub)field in the US (and broader) context. We speak to and from particular legacies of dispossession and repossession engendered by two mated and enduring structural processes, settler colonialism (Simpson 2014) and racial slavery (Hartman 2008; Sharpe 2016; Mignolo 2006), which continue to animate the ubiquity of owning via the making of (linguistic) anthropological knowledge (owning through knowing and collecting) and via the knowing, collecting, and wearing of Black and Native people that helps make up everyday life in America (e.g., mascots, blackface, pop cultural caricatures, Halloween costumes, language appropriation, slave souvenirs, dream catchers and on and on (Meek 2006; 2020; Smalls and Davis forthcoming; Smalls forthcoming). Finally, we draw on Black and Native theorists to offer practices of solidarities and abolition (Byrd 2019; Harris 2019; Latty et. al 2016; Leroy 2016; King 2019; Tuck et. al 2014; Morrill et al. 2016).