Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

Video & perspectives on communication, intercultural learning & the impact of anthropological research.

The Often Forgotten Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Language

2/7/2018

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by Jamie A. Thomas

Why is Language Missing From the Conversation?

I'm picking up the blog this month with a post that highlights how the way our bodies are read--in coordination with the languages we speak--can make for very different intersections with race and gender. How many of us think about language learning when we consider the combined impacts of racialization and gendering? How many study abroad coordinators are aware of intersectional challenges for their students of color?

Why do we forget to consider language as another dimension of our social experience? Because we take it for granted. Language is such a regularly embedded and embodied aspect of our everyday experience, we sometimes are unaware of how it can contextually shift in its use to construct ideals of woman, nation, or Arabic-speaker, for example.

The video posted below on "Study Abroad in Jordan" is my latest installment of the #LanguageStory video series, and follows two college students, Laye and Erica, in their sojourn to Amman, Jordan. I met each of them during my time as an ethnographer embedded in Jordan, and their friendship is all the more powerful considering their many differences: Laye is a first-generation Muslim immigrant to the U.S., and Erica is a White American woman with aspirations for a career in Dubai. 

Watch the Video.

It's Real: Race and Gender Have Impacts on Second Language Learning.

It's a bit paradoxical, but the notion of language is quite often missing from discussion of how socially (and culturally) constructed categories of identity can impact our experiences. In many ways, words said and unsaid can contribute to discrimination, exclusion, and a narrowing of possibilities.  What I mean here, is that even though racialization and gendering are largely accomplished through discourse and communication, we fail to pay attention to language as a medium of exclusion, or as yet another dimension of reading a person as Other.  

​Both Erica and Laye enjoy their life abroad in Amman, Jordan, and view it as an extraordinary opportunity. Their friendship has fostered a unique brand of colloquial Arabic between them. However, as it turns out, their study abroad experiences diverge in ways that relate to how their bodies are gendered and raced by others in Amman. Across each of their experiences, language remains another dimension through which they experience difference. 

For Erica, being seen as a woman narrows her opportunities to converse with men. In her homestay situation, this also leads to marriage as the central topic of conversation. This has the effect of narrowing her potential

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20 Swarthmore students from around the world were interviewed about how they perceive language. Their answers may surprise you…

12/7/2017

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by Bryan Murray and Nathaniel Johns
How do people think about language? Do people agree that all languages, and dialects of certain languages are treated equally? In an attempt to answer these loaded questions, we interviewed a group of twenty Swarthmore College students to see how they perceive of language at home and abroad.
Keywords

  • Standard Language: “Taught in schools and used in print and broadcast media” (Genetti 13).
  • Speech Community:  “A group of people who share a common language or dialect and cultural practices” (Genetti 7).
  • Communicative Competence: “Usually refers to the communicative knowledge and skills shared by a speech community, but these (like all aspects of culture) reside variably in its individual members” (Saville-Troike 21).
  • Prescriptive language/prescriptivism:  “The socially embedded notion of the "correct" or "proper" ways to use a language” (Language Files 14).

Students Speak Up.

“When I hear about things like dialect persecution in the news it really upsets me,” noted Matt, a Junior linguistics minor at Swarthmore College citing a recent story regarding the ideologically empowered misunderstanding of an African American man’s dialect that resulted in the barring of his constitutional right of council during an arrest.  Matt was referring to African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The AAVE dialect of English is seen by many as an incomplete way to communicate.

Stories like this are what troubled Swarthmore students like Matt, whom we interviewed.

Students at “Swat”--the local nickname for the College, have specific perceptions of language that impact the way they use it and understand its implications.  Testimony of the interviewed students reflects the idea that upbringing in various linguistic and cultural environments (also known as speech communities) can result in these perceptions. The testimonies exhibit how their perceptions are also challenged by their participation in study abroad programs and their transition to the Swarthmore Community.

The perceptions of the group are shown through statements regarding language ideology and communicative competence abroad.  The group also shares the same negative view of linguistic inequality (the idea that speakers are unequal or languages are used unequally) as well as the idea that different environments shape this inequality.

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    Main Author

    Jamie A. Thomas is a linguistic anthropologist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and viral Black language. She teaches at Santa Monica College.

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