Language Racism

by Jean-Jacques Weber

This book discusses a new breed of racism, namely language racism, which is spreading both in the USA and in Europe, as well as other parts of the world. The book is a manifesto promoting a more positive view of linguistic and cultural diversity.

Genres: Linguistics

130 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2015

Reviews

[nonfirqtion · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Weber talks about accent discrimination and how it is inherently racist and bigoted. He argues that the racist metaphors have seeped into our vernacular and are employed by states or mainstream media to describe the ‘other’ where they couch they racism in soft language like ‘integration’. He argues that these ideological framework propagated by strong forces have become part of contemporary Western societies “common sense” without realizing how inherently racist they are. Through the sheer force of repetition, the core language racist tenets and assumptions have been naturalized. As they are perceived as commonsensical by the larger society, their deep implication in racism has become increasingly invisible. These common sensical arguments thus are not placed under scrutiny, and accepted as a ‘fact of life’.⠀
⠀
I thought this book was a simple summary of all the scholarship that has been conducted with regards to raciolinguistics, though not exhaustive, Weber tries to cover most bases using really simple and obvious examples. It was a good book to begin my research on this area of linguistics.