LET’S POLITICIZE THE LANGUAGE OF LANGUAGE LOSS ✊
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To begin with, you need to know that AT LEAST 50% of 🌏 languages are currently facing elimination.
We don’t usually talk about this as a political problem, but we need to.
But popular discourse & much academic work remains unchanged.
So let’s look at why this approach is problematic, and more importantly, how we can change it.
rnld.org/sites/default/…
1⃣ Focusing on language erases people & the harm they suffer
2⃣ it avoids identifying WHO caused the harm &
3⃣ it doesn’t provide a way to end it.
Languages & diversity DECLINE.
Languages VANISH & are LOST or FORGOTTEN.
Speakers DIMINISH & DWINDLE & are even DEPLETED.
Things happen but nobody does anything. (Except when they save languages)
Nobody gets hurt.
(👂@vocalfries for more on linguistic discrimination)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSjEexUYAAhU0s.jpg)
We must work to bring this very real suffering into view if we want to end it.
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSjS_fUwAAy8fR.jpg)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSjU2dVAAAxIV4.jpg)
language oppression
language elimination
language erasure
language emancipation
linguistic justice
We need to talk about social & political groups DOING THINGS to each other (& for themselves).
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSjw4TU0AA1KoI.jpg)
First rule: protect the vulnerable.
But otherwise…
🎯Center people🧑🤝🧑
👀 See their suffering 😢
🤔Ask who is causing it? 🤔
🛑 Stop them 🛑
But if depoliticized language prevents us from even getting to that point, then that’s a problem.
On the personal level, we can follow @ChickashaJenny in seeing efforts to nurture languages as ‘decolonial acts of breath-taking resistance’ that work against eliminatory violence.
elpublishing.org/docs/1/14/ldd1…
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSlDPrUEAAT9dr.jpg)
As @nelsonlflores points out, language activism needs to seek material redistribution (substantive, not just symbolic, change)
doi.org/10.1515/multi-…
We also need to critique domination & seek justice. Praise without critique is 'conformist resistance’—e.g. every event in 2019’s Int’l Year of Indigenous Languages (h/t @RokhlK) doi.org/10.1177/004208…
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSlY0SUwAA6pKY.jpg)
but less 4 🇨🇳🇮🇳🇷🇺🇳🇬
This needs to change.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSlzY0U4AAX8-N.jpg)
Let’s interrupt & correct depoliticized speech & make politicized language our mother tongue in preparation 4 the upcoming Int’l decade of Indigenous languages (2022–32)
[quote from Linguistic Disobedience] /fin/
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERSmCfhU8AA-WVY.jpg)