1. Language is Never Neutral
Multicultural Learning Community Social Justice Panel
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ruslana A. Westerlund, Ed.D.
March 9, 2015
@ELLBillofRights
2. My Story
a Ukrainian and marginalized for
speaking Ukrainian in Ukraine
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3. A language ideology is a model for
how social or cultural differences are
to be linguistically expressed. It
codifies language norms and contains
notions on which social functions a
language variety should have.
Schieflin, B., Woolard, K., & Kroskrity, P., (1998)
@ELLBillofRights
4. How does language ideology
play out in the United States?
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7. Language ideologies are cultural
representations of the
intersection of language and
human beings in a social world.
It involves language-based border-
making.
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Schieflin, B., Woolard, K., & Kroskrity, P., (1998)
9. I wish I had an
African
American
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10. Reaction to Coke's Super Bowl ad "America
the Beautiful" sung in seven languages
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11. Top Six Countries with Number of Languages
Spoken (Ethnologue, 2011)
Papua New Guinea
820 languages
Indonesia 720
languages
Nigeria 516
languages
India 427
languages
USA 422 languages
(216 indigenous,
206 immigrant)
Mexico 297
languages
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16. My Speech is Accentless, but
My Skin Color is Not
Poem by Ruslana Westerlund
As featured on Protest Poems: Writing For Social Justice
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Notas do Editor
Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, philosopher, and one of the main theorists in the field of critical pedagogy. Paulo Freire’s most influential work is “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, where he states that “the language is never neutral” as in our speech we express our own world, based on our experiences, filling with them our opinions of meanings which sometimes express more about ourselves than we can possibly imagine. I will argue that language is never neutral because language is always situated in the larger context: history, societal values, and beliefs about what is acceptable and not.
Such ideologies are not only about language. They link to identity, power, morality, aesthetics. Since a language ideology always contains notions on the extra-linguistic qualities of the speech community, definitions of who belongs and who does not, involve processes of language-based border-making. Schieflin, B., Woolard, K., & Kroskrity, P., (1998)
I often sit in meetings with people who speak British English and the other folks around me say. You sound so smart with that accent. I just love listening to you speak. Then I start speaking in my Slavic accent and even if I say something worth of the smart remark, no one says You sound so smart with that accent. I just love listening to you speak.
Or……………