This link will take you to a viewable document with a variety of sources that will allow you to explore how prejudice and discrimination can manifest through language. These articles, videos, books, etc. deal both the prejudice and discrimination based on a speaker’s language (or dialect or accent) and how people use language to discriminate and exclude others (e.g. us vs. them). Check out our other resource pages for more specific instances of linguistic discrimination (e.g. racism, sexism, housing, education).
Resources are structured as follows (with each section hyperlinked to take you to the specific section you’re looking for:
- Terms to search (in databases or Google Scholar)
- Pertinent journals
- Where to start (selected introductory sources that should be accessible to general audiences regardless of academic background)
- Try on your own
- Intermediate and advanced sources: Once you know the basics, these sources can help you more deeply examine several aspects of language, prejudice, and discrimination and their interplay.
- Connecting language and the social: Find out more about how language and dialect indicate social meaning, not just content. What is sociolinguistics and how can it help you learn more about the role language plays in inclusive classrooms and campuses?
- Language and discrimination: These sources generally speak to links between language and discrimination. All our resource pages have more specific examples. The best places to start are the Language and Identity and Language in Policies.
- Field of sociolinguistics and linguistic justice: Learn more about how sociolinguists perform research and the ways linguists and language researchers incorporate linguistic justice into the field.
- Perception of and attitudes towards speakers and accents: Knowing social information about a speaker (e.g. gender) can affect how listeners perceive that person’s speech. Listeners also make judgments and form attitudes about speakers based on accent and dialect. The papers in this section explore instances and effects of these perceptions and attitudes.
