Volume 2023, Issue 282 - Special Issue: Raciolinguistic perspective on labor in the Americas; Issue Editors: Lara Alonso and Laura Villa Galán

This introduction presents the concept of raciolinguistic ideologies and discusses its potential to look at issues related to labor in the Americas. We explore the concept of raciolinguistics as a helpful anchor for researchers to examine the co-construction of race and language. Additionally, we link the current reproduction of social and economic inequality to the interconnection of slavery and capitalism stemming from the colonial projects. We briefly present the six contributions to this special issue, a collection of works that rely on different theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and analytical approaches to examine the (re)production of inequality in American labor markets as it materializes in unfair working practices and discourses that naturalize labor discrimination across the region. The six papers included in the issue offer an interesting dialogue between the raciolinguistic perspective and political economy approaches. Finally, these papers highlight four overarching themes: the repercussions for vulnerabilized communities of the stratification of the labor market, the ways in which the commodification and decommodification of racialized languages tend to favor powerful social positions, the way in which language authority operates to decide what counts as legitimate languages/speakers; and the need felt by speakers to make discursive sense of raciolinguistic practices and discourses.

Resumo Neste artigo, exploramos e analisamos o processo de racialização da língua portuguesa e dos sujeitos africanos no contexto colonial brasileiro. Para tal, exploramos a relação entre as dimensões econômica e política do colonialismo e as práticas linguísticas dos povos africanos escravizados no Brasil. À luz do aparato colonial português – que combinava interesses religiosos, políticos e econômicos – este artigo analisa o papel desempenhado pelas línguas e pelas ideologias linguísticas racializadas, tanto na promoção da exploração como na resistência à dominação colonial. A partir de uma perspectiva histórica e crítica, analisamos o dispositivo econômico e social que sustentou os africanos escravizados no Brasil, profundamente orientado por um sistema baseado no modelo do engenho. Exploramos quatro exemplos: o uso dos termos boçal, ladino, crioulo e língua; a aprendizagem do português pelos africanos escravizados e o papel da proficiência em português; a política de nomeação e etnização; e as ideologias linguísticas missionárias. Apontamos para a relação entre quatro elementos inter-relacionados: as dimensões ideológicas da língua, os processos de racialização, a dominação econômica e as práticas de resistência. Concluímos em defesa de um conceito descolonizador de língua em contextos coloniais que considere a pluralidade de vozes e a epistemologia crítica inscrita na noção de multilinguismos diaspóricos coloniais do Sul Global.

This article investigates racial/ethnic categorizations designating the majority in a minority language and their uses and meanings in everyday interactions to grasp the dynamics of racialization from the perspective of minoritized people. The investigation focuses on the varieties of the language called Businenge(e) Tongo locally or Eastern Maroon Creoles spoken by Maroon populations living in French Guiana and Suriname. We first examine the different terms used to refer to whiteness, such as bakaa , wetiman and poyte , from a historical perspective using historical documents before examining their uses in contemporary conversations. The analysis in the final part focuses on interactions at the hospital of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. The paper combines two approaches: the sociology of social relations and social approaches to language rooted in ethnography. The distinction between the three terms allows considering race as indexing power relations. Naming whiteness is thus a way of providing a critical perspective on the social order.

This essay is interested in exploring the interconnections between language, race, work and power, particularly as it concerns the Caribbean region. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered in the Puerto Rican island-municipality of Vieques, and borrowing theoretical insight from the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, among others, we try to make sense of the linguistic strategies employed by racially marginalized subjects to resist and contest racism, colonialism and labor exploitation in their daily lives, within the context of a tourism economy. We argue that Bakhtin’s approach to language use in conflict-ridden and ideologically-saturated contexts, particularly his treatment of linguistic phenomena like double-voicing, multilingualism and heteroglossia, proves useful in shedding light on the strategic uses of language of, or to the ways in which racially-marginalized subjects create and employ locally-specific linguistic registers as a form of claiming agency and as a mechanism of resistance. In the context of Vieques, we argue, language has become the main vehicle through which Viequense workers resist and accommodate to work in the tourism sector while retaining and preserving a unique ethnic identity.

Over the past few decades in the United States, a powerful consensus has emerged around the value of bi-/multilingualism as human capital, including as an advantage for individuals on the labor market. In this article, I consider how the advantage that Spanish-English bilingualism affords some Latinxs on the labor market might be contested, especially by whites who feel disadvantaged by employers’ preferences for bilingual workers. I explore data from an online petition opposing the use of bilingualism in hiring decisions. Drawing on insights from critical discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, and the sociology of race, I analyze the discursive strategies that petition signers use to contest the economic advantages afforded by Spanish-English bilingualism. I show that signatories draw on a set of strategies that includes reproducing a naturalized one nation, one language ideology; constructing English as equal opportunity language; decommodifying Spanish; and racializing Spanish and its speakers. My analysis suggests that the apparent economic advantages afforded by Spanish-English bilingualism are a salient target for white racial resentment. Thus, I argue that discussions centering around bi-/multilingualism as human capital should consider how neoliberalism and aggrieved whiteness both, in different ways, undermine the labor market advantages bilingualism offers some Latinxs.

Resumen Este artículo explora la tensión entre las ideologías lingüísticas neoliberales que señalan el valor económico del lenguaje en la economía globalizada y los procesos raciolingüísticos que co-naturalizan la raza y la lengua. Enfocándonos en el mercado laboral estadounidense, analizamos las experiencias de jóvenes profesionales de origen latino que, inspirados por la ideología de la ventaja bilingüe, esperan sacar provecho de sus habilidades lingüísticas en el trabajo. Partiendo de la economía política y basándonos en entrevistas semiestructuradas y encuestas realizadas con 23 jóvenes, analizamos dos prácticas laborales concretas para ilustrar la tensión entre (1) la conceptualización del conocimiento del idioma como un componente del “paquete de habilidades” que se espera que posean los trabajadores neoliberales (y que se supone los empleadores deben compensar), y (2) la esencialización de las habilidades lingüísticas de las personas racializadas y de clase trabajadora que se dan por sentadas y se disocian del mérito personal o académico (haciendo que no merezcan compensación económica). Además, exploramos la relación entre la dimensión afectiva de las prácticas lingüísticas y la asimilación entre trabajo y placer que propone el régimen neoliberal. El primer momento que analizamos es la corroboración del conocimiento de español en las entrevistas de trabajo, donde las habilidades lingüísticas no se ven como competencias profesionales que requieren verificación sino como atributos identitarios que se evalúan mediante el perfil racial de los candidatos. La segunda situación que estudiamos es la práctica recurrente de asignar trabajo lingüístico extra a las personas latinas, una práctica que se ha naturalizado y que no halla oposición o cuestionamiento por parte de los y las trabajadoras bilingües. Concluimos que mientras que el neoliberalismo destaca el valor económico de las lenguas, las personas racializadas no se benefician de ese valor puesto que la autoridad lingüística y las jerarquías raciales tradicionales continúan sin ser cuestionadas.

International students in Canadian universities are deemed valuable immigrants for the Canadian nation as they are equipped with formal credentials easily recognizable for local employers. Despite having desired technical skills and knowledge, the English of these students is perceived as hindering their ability to voice this expertise. This then forces international students to think about how language can affect their employability during their studies. Drawing on a narrative analysis of the experiences of 14 international students in Ontario and focussing on speech accent, this article explores how they make sense of aural employability , the ability to be heard as employable, through participating in Canadian higher education. The students connected aural employability with ‘sounding Canadian’ through raciolinguistic sensemaking , a type of sensemaking that interprets the linguistic world with various ideologies of whiteness. Such sensemaking speaks to how Canadian universities, as sites of workplace language learning, cannot be divorced from the white settler logics that pervade these institutions.

Caldasia, a journal published by the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, was the arena of language tensions originating in scientific exchanges in the mid-20th century at a time when English was in the process of affirming its place as the lingua franca of science. In the 1940s, the journal showed indications of a multilingual process reflected in the considerable presence of US authors and their articles in English published in its pages. This paper examines Caldasia’s communication circuit, specifically the negotiations that emerged between the editor and US researchers when deciding on the most appropriate language for publishing the articles. Selecting the language of the articles was considered by them as a critical element in determining the geographical scope of the journal, positioning Caldasia as a regional or international journal. This analysis demonstrates how the tension between multilingual repertoires and linguistic ideologies was experienced in Caldasia. The editor promoted Caldasia as a multilingual journal and to reach this objective the editor managed the multilingual repertoires of the authors in the journal. The case of Caldasia indicates that the Anglicization process of science in the XX century required intense scientific contacts carried out in non-English-speaking spaces; multilingualism was one of the strategies by which English became a globally accepted language.