INTERVIEW: Anna Drożdżowicz and Yael Peled on ‘The complexities of linguistic discrimination’5/16/2025
Interviewed by Joey Pollock
1. As you explain in your work, there is growing interest in ethical questions concerning language and communication, not just within philosophy, but also within theoretical and empirical research in other disciplines. You propose that many of the issues and phenomena identified in these different research areas may be usefully investigated under the umbrella of ‘linguistic discrimination’. Can you begin by explaining what linguistic discrimination is? What are some examples of phenomena that fall under this category? In the paper, we propose a relatively broad characterization of linguistic discrimination as a range of practices, actions and experiences, which share a common core of an unfair (i.e. inequitable) treatment of a person on the basis of their language, language use or linguistic identity. One prominent example is that of intentionally denying a linguistic minority the right to use and transmit their language. What we have in mind here are forced linguistic assimilation policies resulting in deliberate linguistic deprivation and erosion, through coercive state policies in critical domains, such as education, healthcare and law. Another set of cases concerns situations in which certain linguistic properties (e.g. relating to a person’s accent, or whether their language is spoken or signed) function merely as a trigger or a proxy for other, prima facie language-unrelated negative attitudes toward members of different groups, based e.g. on race, ethnicity, class, gender and ability. So understood, linguistic discrimination can take various forms. The crucial element that these various forms share (including the two cases above) is a common experience of discrimination in communication, and in virtue of being a user of language. Moreover, experiencing such discrimination may affect how a person experiences and engages in communication with others, as well as their sense of linguistic identity. In the paper we highlight the challenge of understanding the complexities of linguistic discrimination, which arise from the complex and “messy” nature of both the phenomenon itself and the various concepts, definitions and theories used for studying it within and across academic disciplines (e.g. philosophy, psychology, linguistics, political science, anthropology). Thus, one of our key aims in this paper is to explain certain variability in how linguistic discrimination is defined and investigated across disciplines. 2. You identify that linguistic discrimination can be the result of either explicit or implicit attitudes and biases. One of the central focuses of your research is linguistic discrimination that stems from implicit attitudes, in particular. Can you explain what implicit attitudes are and how they may lead to linguistic discrimination? In our description of implicit attitudes that may lead to linguistic discrimination, we take implicit attitudes to be those that are typically outside one’s conscious awareness (and control) (see e.g. Kelly 2013; Brownstein & Saul, 2016). In cases that we are interested in, such attitudes are negative attitudes towards certain languages, linguistic properties (e.g., accent) or forms of communication that underlie an unfair treatment of interlocutors (i.e. those who participate in communication on a given occasion). As an example, consider cases where members of one community, A, often the more powerful one, routinely discriminate against members of a less-powerful community, B, when members of B do not perform according to the implicit linguistic expectations of community A. This may happen, for example, when members of B use A’s language with a marked B-accent, or when using only some competencies in A’s language but not others (e.g. reading and writing in it but not speaking or listening). Members of A may discriminate without being consciously aware of their implicit attitudes toward the particular linguistic properties used by B, and/or any other negative attitudes members of A may have toward them. They will also typically not have direct control over how their negative attitudes impact on their behaviour towards members of B. This above is, of course, but one way to understand what implicit attitudes are, which can be applied to cases that we are interested in. There is a substantive debate concerning the nature of implicit attitudes (e.g., are they unconscious, dissonant or unendorsed cognitions, or something else? See e.g. Holroyd et al., 2017), as well as ongoing empirical research concerning implicit biases. Moreover, we do not want to preclude the possibility that more than one kind of implicit mental state or process may underlie various specific forms of linguistic discrimination. 3. You argue that the methods used to investigate linguistic discrimination can impact how we theorize about the phenomenon. What are some of the methodological challenges facing research in this area? There are at least two things we can point to. First, we note in the paper that some strands of research concerning bias and language in social psychology and sociolinguistics face some problems related to their reproducibility (i.e. whether and to what degree a study provides the same findings when independently conducted by a different researcher). In a nutshell, more work may be needed to experimentally investigate the role of implicit bias in communication. For example, Roessel and colleagues (2020) suggest that implicit measures may be needed to uncover the nature and scope of some forms of foreign accent bias, given that participants in studies investigating prejudice against speakers with foreign accents may be able to suppress their prejudice when explicitly asked for their opinion about a speaker (e.g., Wang et al., 2013). We are hopeful that experimental research on bias, including language-related implicit bias, will not only provide robust results, but also give us some knowledge regarding possible strategies for countering linguistic discrimination (see e.g. Hansen et al. 2014). Second, we are excited about the prospects of expanding our toolkit for investigating various forms of linguistic discrimination, particularly those resulting from implicit attitudes. One way to do so, we suggest, would be to expand the evidential pools and look for direct/ personal/ first-person evidence from individuals with an experience of linguistic discrimination. While this may not seem to be a controversial proposal as such, the proof is ultimately in the pudding: we need a considered theoretical grounding for why we want to appeal to such evidence and corresponding methodological approach(es) that can be used to gather and process this type of evidence. 4. Let me follow up on this last point: So, you propose expanding the varieties of evidence appealed to in studies of linguistic discrimination to include the first-person perspectives of the individuals who are harmed. What sources of evidence have traditionally been employed in this kind of research, and what are some of the benefits of adding first-person reports to the evidential pool? The view that testimonies from harmed individuals constitute an acceptable, valid and legitimate form of evidence is more common in cases of explicit negative attitudes than it is in their implicit counterparts. To our mind, however, this very type of evidence offers a valuable source of knowledge on the nature, dynamics and mechanisms of linguistic discrimination resulting from implicit attitudes, which may not be so easily detected in current research designs. We want to emphasise that our aim is not to rank different evidentiary sources, that is, to pronounce some forms of evidence as intrinsically preferable to others. Rather, we make a case for a greater inclusion of this particular type of evidence, and of existing (albeit still not too common) pertinent research that incorporates first-person-perspective, into current studies on linguistic discrimination in its various forms. While we hope that such a proposal would not appear too controversial, we openly acknowledge the fact that its systematic theoretical justification, and the methodological challenges that it raises, are nonetheless far from a settled matter. We hope that the emerging scholarship that directly focuses on key theoretical and methodological aspects of including first-person perspectives in psychological research could be of some help here, given that it tries to systematise that endeavour by means of identifying different approaches (e.g. systematic introspection, autoethnography), and their respective strengths and weaknesses (e.g. Lumma and Weger 2023). Consider autoethnography as one example. Autoethnography can be defined as a qualitative research method and a “genre of academic writing that draws on and analyzes or interprets the lived experience of the author and connects researcher insights to self-identity, cultural rules and resources, communication practices, traditions (...)” and more (Poulos 2021: 4). Such accounts of individual personal histories can provide a valuable insight into their linguistic experiences, including experiences of more or less subtle forms of linguistic discrimination that may have otherwise gone unnoted (e.g., Snoddon 2022; Dovchin et al. 2024). Arguably, such accounts can aid investigating the experiential basis of linguistic discrimination in its various forms, including those resulting from implicit attitudes. Authors' work:
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