Speaking Truth to Cacophony: Raciolinguistic Frameworks as Resistance to a Renewed Onslaught of Racist Policy

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In a time of renewed attacks–both old and new–against racial justice efforts, this session outlines impactful frameworks for speaking truth to the present day policy cacophony of injustice. The papers in this session draw on raciolinguistic frameworks to amplify the forms of resistance practiced across multilingual communities of color to inform acts of resistance across the levels of community, policy, and discourse. All papers examine the ways in which language can be weaponized as a tool of profiling or political gain, but also as a form of individual and community resistance. In tandem, this session will have implications for drawing on raciolinguistic frameworks to reimagine futures grounded in justice.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 3: Languages, Literacies, and Representations

Chair

• Diana Lalata, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• From Sanctuary Promises to Praxis: Educator and Community Resistance to Raciolinguistic Profiling in Multilingual Spaces - Jordan Gonzalez, St. John's University

• I Speak, I Write, I Resist: A Long-term English Learner’s Counterstory of Defiance - Hosna Jabalameli, Unaffiliated; Yalda M. Kaveh, Arizona State University

• Enshrining English, Censoring Equity: Language Appropriation in Anti-Diversity Mandates - Chris K. Chang-Bacon, University of Virginia; Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Session Organizer

• Chris K. Chang-Bacon, University of Virginia

Discussants

• Aris M. Clemons, University of Tennessee

• María Cioe-Pena, University of Pennsylvania

• Manka M. Varghese, University of Washington

• Kate Seltzer, Rowan University