“Your English is so good”: Linguistic experiences of racialized students and instructors of a Canadian university

Abstract

Racism has increasingly been exposed and problematized in public domains, including institutions of higher education. In academia, critical race theory (CRT) has guided scholars to uncover everyday experiences of racism by highlighting the intersectionality of race with other identity categories, among which language constitutes an important, yet underexplored, component. Through the conceptual lens of CRT and counter-storytelling as a methodological orientation, this study investigated how racialized graduate students and faculty members at a Canadian university experienced racialization and racism in relation to issues of language, including communication and the use of ethnic names as semiotic markers. Individual and focus group interviews generated participants’ stories, to which we applied a thematic analysis. Participants generally felt that they were forced into pre-determined and essentialized categories of race, ethnicity, nationality, and language. Racialized non-native speakers of an official language—English or French—often received compliments or inquisitive comments on their language proficiency, which further accentuated their raciolinguistic Otherness and caused pain. Conversely, racialized native speakers did not report receiving compliments on language. For East Asian participants especially, speaking White English seemed to offset their racial stigma and psychologically separated them from non-native, English-speaking East Asian immigrants who looked like them. These experiences indicate normative expectations. The participants felt they were expected to not only speak, write, or communicate in the White normative language and manners, but also to use or not use an Anglicized name against their will. These impositions were questioned and resisted by some participants, and antiracist consciousness was expressed. The participants’ voices encourage universities to validate their stories as well as their ways of telling their stories.

Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission

“…An increasing body of scholarship has indeed documented that those who do not neatly fit into these binary categories often find their identities undermined, their language scrutinized, and their belonging questioned (e.g. Hua 2015; Hua & Li Wei 2016; Kubota, Corella, Lim, & Sah 2021; Tankosić & Dovchin 2021). Similarly, there is extensive documentation of the fact that students in Australian universities find it difficult to engage across the perceived language-identity barrier (Arkoudis & Baik 2014; Phan 2016; Marangell, Arkoudis, & Baik 2018).…”

“So, what English do I speak, really?”: A transnational‐translingual‐and‐transracial pracademic inquires into her raciolinguistic entanglements and transraciolinguistic transgressions

“…I now extend this to include English language teachers and teacher educators who migrate to Global North contexts, including those in North America, from postcolonial Global South contexts, such as South Asia, and who are racialized and linguicized in myriad ways-which, in turn, has implications for the identities and pedagogies those teachers and teacher educators engage in. Kubota et al (2021), for instance, have inquired into experiences with racism and racialization of students and faculty at a Canadian university, where participants described being forcibly "categorized into a pre-determined raciolinguistic group" (p. 765) including transracialization across random raciolinguistic categories that are reminiscent of Alim's own experiences with shifting raciolinguistic profiling (see Alim, 2016b). Some participants in Kubota et al's (2021) study also described dealing with "paper-cut microaggressions" (p. 9) in the form of seeming "compliments" for (or dismissal of) their English proficiency, while others demonstrated a kind of internalized linguicism when they identified their Englishes with mainstreamed and majoritized "white" English varieties, such as "British" or "Canadian" English.…”

“…Kubota et al. (2021), for instance, have inquired into experiences with racism and racialization of students and faculty at a Canadian university, where participants described being forcibly “categorized into a pre‐determined raciolinguistic group” (p. 765) including transracialization across random raciolinguistic categories that are reminiscent of Alim's own experiences with shifting raciolinguistic profiling (see Alim, 2016b). Some participants in Kubota et al.…”

“…Some participants in Kubota et al. 's (2021) study also described dealing with “paper‐cut microaggressions” (p. 9) in the form of seeming “compliments” for (or dismissal of) their English proficiency, while others demonstrated a kind of internalized linguicism when they identified their Englishes with mainstreamed and majoritized “white” English varieties, such as “British” or “Canadian” English.…”

“…While Kubota et al. (2021) focused on Canada, often the scholarship that emerges from the United States tends to be heavily U.S.‐centric. However, many of us immigrant scholars (e.g., Braine, 1999; Canagarajah, 2012; Jain, 2020; Solano‐Campos, 2014; Yazan, 2019) have been helping diversify those narratives by unsilencing our complex “home country” experiences even when the stories we tell are based on events that take place in the United States.…”