Linguistic discrimination and diversity: the pivotal role of linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania’s writing program

2.1 Insights from linguistics

Linguists abide by the principle that no one variety of language is inherently more logical, efficient, or effective than another for communication; Weinreich (1953) makes early reference to this principle in writing about nonstandard language in various countries. Seminal sociolinguistic research in the US also documented nonstandard dialects, such as Labov’s (1968, 1969, 1970 documentation of grammatical and rhetorical features in African American English (AAE) and Smitherman’s (1986) cross-disciplinary work, Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America (originally published in 1977).

Documenting language variation and diversity led linguists to identify linguistic bias and call out discrimination against speakers of minority language groups, particularly speakers of AAE. Both Labov and Smitherman, for instance, called for linguists to push back against the deficit theory of language in the education of Black children, in which nonstandard speech or writing is viewed as a deviation from a single, correct form of language and speakers of AAE are judged to be deficient in language skills and intelligence. Instead, linguists value an individual’s dialect or language as a rich resource, and bilingualism or bidialectalism as an asset that is intertwined with identity. Smitherman’s (1986) advocacy for linguistic justice in primary and secondary education has since been taken up by other linguists calling for linguistic equity and anti-racist practices, such as Baugh (2003, 2018, Charity Hudley and Mallinson (2018), Godley et al. (2006), Lippi-Green (2022), and Rickford and King (2016), among many others. This line of research has come to extend beyond the field of education, crossing disciplinary boundaries into national language policy, educational policy, and linguistic profiling in employment and housing, and has profound implications for criminal law.

2.2 Bringing linguistics into the writing classroom

James Berlin’s influential history of the field of writing studies observed that “the study of linguistics in the English department during the twentieth century has been one of the most formative influences in the study of both literature and rhetoric” (Berlin 1987: 135; see also Aull and Shapiro 2023). Thus it is no surprise that the field of writing studies in the twenty-first century continues to be influenced by the work of linguists on linguistic diversity and discrimination. Along with Smitherman, some other particularly influential sociolinguists include H. Samy Alin, Esther Milu, and Elaine Richardson.

Most notable, perhaps, is Smitherman’s obvious influence as one of the authors of the 1974 position statement, “Students’ right to their own language” (SRTOL), published by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) – the largest professional organization of rhetoric, writing, and composition scholars in the US (Butler et al. 1974). SRTOL declares: “We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language – the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style,” and continues, pointing directly to the field of linguistics, that “language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another.” (For an overview of the history of language issues in college composition, see MacDonald 2007 and Smitherman 1999.)

SRTOL continues to be the touchstone for seeing linguistic diversity as an asset and, arguably more important, as the conceptual framework for anti-racist pedagogy in writing classrooms. In 2011, Horner and colleagues, building upon the scholarship that followed the publication of that statement, called for a translingual approach to researching and teaching writing. Borrowing from linguistics scholarship, they proposed a reconceptualization of pedagogical practices to better address linguistic diversity, and that translingualism should work within, but also against, English monolingual norms. Other scholars working in the area of translingualism similarly view language as a fluid, negotiable resource in navigating communication as well as identity (see Canagarajah 2013; Canagarajah and Gao 2019; Horner 2017; Horner et al. 2011; Matsuda 2013; inter alia) and agree that translingualism remains the primary conceptual tool for addressing linguistic diversity and discrimination.

However, translingualism has also been criticized as promoting a “sameness-in-difference” problem, neglecting to foreground SRTOL’s call to address the linguistic violence against marginalized students and their language use. Keith Gilyard’s influential essay on translingualism, for example, noted that

The translanguaging subject generally comes off in the scholarly literature as a sort of linguistic every person, which makes it hard to see the suffering and the political imperative as clearly as in the heyday of SRTOL. In other words, if translanguaging is the unqualified norm, then by definition it is something that all students, including high achievers, perform … Translingualists are clear about the fact that we all differ as language users from each other and in relation to a perceived standard … [But] not all translingual writers are stigmatized in the same manner.” (Gilyard 2016: 285–286)

Gilyard warned that such an approach was likely to alienate Black and Brown scholars working in the field, who may read this as a “devaluing of the historical and unresolved struggles of groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy and suffer disproportionately” from it (2016: 286).

In 2020, a group of Black writing studies scholars, including April Baker-Bell, published “This ain’t another statement! This is a DEMAND for Black linguistic justice!” and provided a list of demands for dismantling white supremacy and centering Black linguistic justice (Baker-Bell et al. 2020). Baker-Bell, a leading scholar on linguistic discrimination in writing studies, also published a book the same year that provided an approach for training instructors as well as for designing curriculum that centers Black students’ needs – linguistic, cultural, racial, and self-confidence. The approach asks teachers to interrogate all aspects of their practice, to consider how it neglects to combat racism and white supremacy. Tessa Brown examined the Writing about Writing pedagogy that she and many other writing instructors have adopted, and found that using it left “whiteness normative and undisturbed” in her classroom (Brown 2020: 599). Brown notes, “today when I teach hip-hop languaging, I do so explicitly in the tradition of the Students’ Right to Their Own Language resolution and in the context of the translingualism movement, with lessons and readings on the sociolinguistics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and hip-hop language” (2020: 600). Brown uses “reflective writing to ask students to identify their home literacy practices so that the diversity of language experiences and norms in the room never intrudes as a surprise” (2020: 600). Most recently, a collection edited by Do and Rowan (2022) calls for a race-conscious translingualism in writing studies as a field and in writing classrooms.

2.3 Interventions to intentionally reduce language discrimination

While both linguists and writing scholars have emphasized the need for more equitable approaches to linguistic differences, pedagogical approaches are still emerging in the literature; we mention some recent examples here, but do not undertake a full survey. Along with the work of scholars touched upon in the prior section, the sociolinguistic work of Wolfram and Dunstan (2021) addresses language diversity across the campus. Other examples of proposals for writing assignments that implement translingual approaches include Canagarajah’s (2020) literary autobiography and Wang’s (2022) use of autoethnography. Scholars like Cushman (2016) and Presley (2022) outline practices that engage Indigenous histories and language, while Simon (2022) discusses activities focusing on the personal experiences of child language brokers. Beyond the undergraduate writing classroom, other scholarship focuses on Writing Center practices and faculty development (see, for example, Schreiber et al. 2022).

Turning to the field of social psychology, linguistic bias is also studied as part of a broader line of inquiry into social perceptions and bias; controlled experimental conditions are used to determine what specific factors may lead to in-group versus out-group perceptions, group stereotypes, bias, and so on. Two studies in particular, Hansen et al. (2013) and Weyant (2007), propose interventions for reducing or mitigating negative biases.

In an early experimental study on an intervention to reduce linguistic bias, Weyant (2007) draws from previous literature on in-group and out-group behavior and perceptions, which suggests that perspective-taking can reduce unfavorable attitudes toward another social group, particularly a stigmatized group. Perspective-taking is the act of understanding another’s point of view or perceiving an alternate point of view than one’s own. Hypothesizing that perspective-taking can reduce negative attitudes toward accented speakers (who are perceived as members of an out-group), in Weyant’s experimental condition, participants listened to audio recordings of women recounting a personal narrative; participants then wrote a “day in the life” paragraph about what they thought a typical day for that speaker would be like. The results of the study indicate that when participants had engaged in perspective-taking, they judged a speaker with a nonstandard accent to be more intelligent, competent, well educated, and so on compared to the evaluation of the same speaker by participants who had not engaged in perspective-taking.

Building upon Weyant’s findings, Hansen et al. (2013) designed an intervention in which individuals are unexpectedly required to speak in a second language before evaluating nonstandard speakers for personal traits. While participants were ostensibly waiting for the study to begin, they were approached by a peer who asked for directions in a language that was a second language for all subjects. This experience was then followed by a task in which the participants listened to speakers with standard accents and nonstandard accents. Those who had not participated in the intervention evaluated speakers with a nonstandard accent to be less competent than those with a standard accent; this effect was lessened when subjects had participated in the intervention, indicating that “bias against nonstandard-accented speakers can be prevented by an intervention that places the evaluators in the shoes of the evaluated” (Hansen et al. 2013: 73).

These two studies indicate that interventions can result in a significant change in attitudes toward nonstandard language, from which we draw the insight that even brief targeted exposure to, and reflections upon, the experiences of those speaking other language varieties can have significant impact on changing language attitudes and bias. We also follow scholars concerned with the depoliticization of marginalized Black language speakers, and draw these strands of scholarship together in the Linguistic Discrimination unit of our curriculum.

3.1 Part 1: overview of linguistic concepts

Part 1 introduces students to scholarship in linguistics as well as popular culture, including a simplified map of American English dialects by Robert Delaney (see Figure 2) that was published in the Washington Post (Wilson 2013). Our goal in this overview is to introduce students to the idea of “Englishes” and linguistic diversity, rather than one “proper” English.

Figure 2:

Delaney’s simplified map of American dialects (Wilson 2013).

We contrast this map with the work of Jones (2015) on AAE, which demonstrates a similar plurality of AAE subdialects in the US, and also notes a different migration pattern from White English. Where White English followed housing trends in the US, AAE followed the patterns of the Great Migration (see Figure 3).

Figure 3:

Migration patterns of African American English speakers (Jones 2015). © 2015 Taylor Jones. Used with permission.

The overview concludes with a writing prompt for a short, informal reflection on what they learned from this unit, including a few low-stakes questions that guide them to evaluate their own attitudes toward language use: “What does a smart person sound like to you? An unintelligent person? A villain? A hero?”

3.2 Part 2: code-switching

The second unit focuses on code-switching. Because students can find code-switching a fun concept, and in so doing miss the urgent and even life-threatening implications of code-switching for marginalized populations, we are careful to remain focused tightly on code-switching as a means of negotiating profound structural inequities. Rather than attempt to narrate this or reduce it to readings, we provide students with a series of links to YouTube videos that include firsthand multifaceted accounts of code-switching, from Black students navigating white schools and friendships, to the media reception of a Black witness, to the Travon Martin shooting and the arrest of Sandra Bland; a Black founder and CEO of a tech start-up discusses the need for code-switching to succeed not only in school but in the workplace; and finally a Black scholar talks about code-switching in his own LA neighborhoods to avoid inter-gang violence as well as in the PWI he attended and now works for.

Hearing the speakers’ own voices in these videos is important because students are engaged not only in learning the concepts, but in hearing Black speakers narrate their own histories and experiences. The example that, anecdotally, appears to be most remarked by students, however, is of former US president Barack Obama in his many displays of code-switching.

The three videos that students screen and respond to in this unit are: “What is code switching?” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNbdn0yuUw8); “The cost of code switching” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3hRq2RnNI); and “Everyday struggle: Switching codes for survival” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJy5yeBSQ7o).

3.3 Part 3: languaging discussion board

In the third part, Languaging and Identity, we once again rely on videos that include interviews with linguistics scholars and firsthand accounts of multilingual experiences. They learn from Jim Cummins how we fail to recognize the linguistic capital that multilingual students bring to the university, instead casting multilingual students as lacking in language skills rather than as having a wide range of linguistic accomplishments, experiences, and resilience (“Jim Cummins on language and identity”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuvFaNgAv88).

In turn, in a “Spanglish” video, Spanglish speakers alongside linguist Walt Wolfram discuss how these multilingual speakers typically command two languages and an additional set of rules that govern how, when, and why to switch between the two languages – another form of “code-switching” (“Spanglish”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYMnNlfSMC0).

These videos can be eye-opening to students. Those who are multilingual now have ways to describe what they were doing intuitively; monolingual students are given a second lesson in the fact that these different languages, whether Spanglish or AAE, are sophisticated and rule-governed.