“Why Should I Not Speak My Own Language (Chinese) in Public in America?”: Linguistic Racism, Symbolic Violence, and Resistance

Abstract

This article seeks to understand a Chinese international student's (Hong's) encounters with linguistic racism as symbolic violence as well as why and how he resisted different forms of linguistic racism in different situations. Data findings suggest that linguistic racism as symbolic violence takes different forms through both verbal and nonverbal language under the scrutiny of the white gaze, which produces arbitrary power, control, and domination. This triad of linguistic racism, symbolic violence, and the white gaze formed an intersection, which was practiced through visible and hearable linguistic modalities immediately to subordinate and oppress Hong as a victim. The researchers argue that the triad of linguistic racism, symbolic violence, and the white gaze works hand in glove with each other to construct an intersection, which reproduces and reinforces structures of domination and hierarchy. The researchers, therefore, suggest that more research is needed to deconstruct the complexity and subtlety of the intersection of linguistic racism, symbolic violence, and the white gaze. Educational implications for recognizing and combating linguistic racism are also addressed.

Autoethnographically Interrogating School-Based Anti-“Asian” Racism in Post(?)-Pandemic Times: An AsianCrit-Informed Composite Palimpsest

“…Doesn't that place white Australians in pole position of power when we talk about tolerance (Hage, 1998;Liu, 2017)? Doesn't merely being tolerated completely devalue our linguistic and immigrant experiences and abilities (Tomic, 2013) and play into a form of linguistic racism (Wang & Dovchin, 2022)?" I see the cogs in Demeter's brain whirring in response to my questions just as I notice Christine, the second of the two new "Asian" hires approaching.…”

“…Doesn’t that place white Australians in pole position of power when we talk about tolerance (Hage, 1998; Liu, 2017)? Doesn’t merely being tolerated completely devalue our linguistic and immigrant experiences and abilities (Tomic, 2013) and play into a form of linguistic racism (Wang & Dovchin, 2022)?”…”

Justice in English-Only

“…Moreover, this gatekeeping is accompanied by narratives that downplay, or actively deny, the racialised effects of linguistic discrimination. In denying what has been called 'linguistic racism' 1 (Dovchin, 2019;Wang and Dovchin, 2022;Dobinson and Mercieca, 2020), judicial reasoning can further reify the law as a kind of 'white space' (Anderson, 2015;Hill, 1998) which actively excludes the racial and linguistic 'Other'. This further reinforces longstanding historical legacies in an Australian context where language norms and assessments have often been tools of exclusion as well as a mechanism for assimilationism (Ndhlovu, 2008(Ndhlovu, 2014.…”

“… 1. Defined broadly as forms of institutional and interpersonal discrimination occurring on the basis of language which disproportionately impacts upon racialised minorities (see Dovchin, 2019; Wang and Dovchin, 2022; Dobinson and Mercieca, 2020). …”