Systems, features, figures: Approaches to language and class vs. language and race

This article draws from ethnographic research among youth in Delhi's expanding middle classes to call for more sociolinguistic attention to the role played by sexuality discourse in the reproduction of class relations. The discussion highlights the centrality of the middle classes to sustaining as well as shifting sexual normativity, suggesting that sexual norms are in part constituted through everyday discourses that situate middle class subjectivity between two class extremes. Specifically, the article tracks how Hinglish, as a mixed‐language alternative to a class system polarized by English and Hindi, came to rival English as the preferred language of sexuality, challenging the elite censorship of “vernacular” languages that began in nineteenth‐century colonialism. However, as demonstrated by two case studies of queer speakers at different ends of the Hinglish continuum, speakers of this internally diverse hybrid variety are not equally able to master the sexuality discourse that has become indexical of upward mobility.

Section: Class In Language Gender and Sexuality Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language in the middle: Class and sexuality on the Hinglish continuum

Hall

2021

“…We acknowledge that multifaceted aspects of participant identities, which our methods are unable to fully capture, also influence their linguistic experiences, especially with respect to region and class. As Lo (2020) discusses, conceptualizations of ‘language and race’ without a broader contextualization of other factors, sometimes fail to present the entire sociolinguistic picture, which represents a limitation for the field. However, as the current study is among the first to specifically address racialized linguistic experiences on campus, we hope it acts as a starting point for further research that explores these complex intersections.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociolinguistic labor, linguistic climate, and race(ism) on campus: Black college students’ experiences with language at predominantly white institutions

Holliday

Squires

2020

This project explores the sociolinguistic experiences of black American students in predominantly/historically white higher education settings. Through interviews with 30 black undergraduates at two different types of institutions, we show how language is a salient factor in racialization and racism on American college campuses. Both sets of students discussed stereotype threat (being at risk of negative stereotyping based on their language), as well as bifurcated sociolinguistic identities (an outcome of managing their linguistic resources to avoid negative stereotyping). We also find that the nuances of students’ racialized experiences with language differ depending on other elements of campus climate: at the small private college, more students described tensions between black students, and stringent expectations for hyper‐‘academic’ language. Student accounts reveal the sociolinguistic labor they perform in navigating campus environments rife with linguistic racism, showing that campus climate includes linguistic climate, undergirded by raciolinguistic ideologies.

“…Despite the country's richness in natural resources, significant economic growth and rapid expansion of access to primary education, the capital city of Mozambique, Maputo, faces a paradox shared by capital cities in former colonies: regardless of high economic growth, Maputo city continues to be marked by spatial divisions and social and economic inequalities. Aiming to engage with recent debates about how to study the relationship of language to dimensions of social inequality (Gal & Irvine, 2019; Lo, 2020) and particularly to the divisive dynamics of languages in former colonies (Tupas, 2019) and in African contexts (Banda, 2020), this study proposes empirically grounded analyses based on various forms of data, inspired by Bourdieu's work, as a promising way forward to explore the often multidimensional and mutually reinforcing foundations for social hierarchies and the crafting of ‘distinctive’ selves in postcolonial and African contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Contemporary inequalities are therefore closely tied to what Bourdieu described as ‘classification struggles’, or the battle over the templates for thinking, feeling and making judgements of social practices. These templates also shape our lifestyle choices which are central to the crafting of selves through ‘emblems of distinction’ (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Gal & Irvine, 2019; Lo, 2020, p. 4).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From racial to linguistic social divisions: Coloniality in contemporary Maputo

Reite

2021

Inspired by Bourdieu's work, this study draws on multidisciplinary datasets to unravel the role of language and symbolic power for retaining social hierarchies and crafting ‘distinctive’ selves in postcolonial times. Showcasing Mozambique's capital city of Maputo, the study relies on censuses from the period 1980 to 2017, historical data, interviews and metadiscursive reflection to problematize how education can serve as an instrument to effectively inscribe a certain social order in people's minds and bodies that can lead to an unconscious acceptance of social differences and hierarchies, to ‘a sense of one's place’. Probing into complex temporal and spatial co‐presences, the paper highlights the role that education has played in promoting ideas central to the divisive dynamics of Portuguese and how social distinctions that were obviously more overtly racial in colonial times have become more covert and have found more fine‐grained linguistic expression and perpetuate conditions of coloniality in contemporaneity.