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Soft linguistic terrorism: 21st century re-articulations

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Published/Copyright: July 20, 2023
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Educational Linguistics
From the journal Educational Linguistics Volume 2 Issue 2

Abstract

Over three decades ago, Gloria Anzaldúa identified ideologies of linguistic standardization as an oppressive force in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas as well as the local university. Such ideologies were used to delegitimize Chicanos via “linguistic terrorism,” or, routine forms of psychological and physical punishment meant to enforce idealized white, middle-class, monolingual social norms. However, times have changed. To account for more recent conditions, I qualify contemporary manifestations as soft linguistic terrorism, which relies more so on incentivization (reward as opposed to punishment) and ideological recruitment (enforcement based on the appearance of consent), yet continue to reproduce the near identical racializing ideologies Anzaldúa identified decades ago. Using a linguistic anthropological approach to discourse analysis, this article focuses on ethnographic interviews with students and faculty to illustrate how forms of linguistic terrorism have been rearticulated via raciolinguistic ideologies in the same region and at the same university that inspired Anzaldúa’s formulation of linguistic terrorism in the 1980s.

Keywords: bilingualism; latinidad; linguistic terrorism; raciolinguistic ideologies; standard language
Corresponding author: Mike Mena, Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies, Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, New York, 11210-2889, USA, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

A special thanks to Nancy Hornberger for her inciteful commentary on this article. Credit must also be extended to earlier readers, but whose comments directed the formulation of the concepts presented here. This includes: Angela Reyes, Jillian Cavanaugh, and Jose del Valle. Finally, a special thanks to my graduate assistant, Dylan Nytko, whose help as reader/commenter, grammar checker, and formatter proved invaluable. All shortcomings are my own.

  1. Research funding: This research was previously funded by the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, 2021–2022.

  2. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: Authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.

  5. Ethical approval: The local Institutional Review Board deemed the study exempt from review.

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Received: 2023-04-02
Accepted: 2023-06-29
Published Online: 2023-07-20
Published in Print: 2023-12-15

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Soft linguistic terrorism: 21st century re-articulations
  4. Limited capital: a genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education
  5. Answerability in computer-assisted language learning: a critical examination of social justice research from a decolonial perspective
  6. It isn’t sloppy language: exploring the discourse of Village English
  7. Perspective
  8. Academic adjustment of international students studying in South Korea: the Global Korea Scholarship program perspective
https://doi.org/10.1515/eduling-2023-0003
Keywords for this article
bilingualism; latinidad; linguistic terrorism; raciolinguistic ideologies; standard language

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Soft linguistic terrorism: 21st century re-articulations
  4. Limited capital: a genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education
  5. Answerability in computer-assisted language learning: a critical examination of social justice research from a decolonial perspective
  6. It isn’t sloppy language: exploring the discourse of Village English
  7. Perspective
  8. Academic adjustment of international students studying in South Korea: the Global Korea Scholarship program perspective
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