Thread by @GJosephRoche

It’s February 21, International Mother Language Day.

LET’S POLITICIZE THE LANGUAGE OF LANGUAGE LOSS ✊

/thread/

Do what?

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.

Since the 1990s, public discussions of this crisis have talked about ‘endangered’ languages, comparing languages to species & global language ‘loss’ to mass extinction. Efforts to intervene in this crisis have mimicked conservation biology.

This approach has been critiqued before, perhaps best by Jane Hill.

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/…

This approach has 3 main problems:

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.

In this approach:

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.

This approach overlooks how languages always ‘decline’ & ‘vanish’ in the context of linguistic discrimination: status subordination, material inequality, social banishment, ethical loneliness & political abandonment.

(👂@vocalfries for more on linguistic discrimination)

@vocalfries People suffer. Often their suffering is “ordinary, chronic & cruddy rather than catastrophic, crisis-laden & sublime” (E Povinelli). It is the product of slow violence (R Nixon) across generations.

We must work to bring this very real suffering into view if we want to end it.

@vocalfries We need a new critical lexicon for this. We need to talk about:

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).

@vocalfries Failing to do so not only conceals harms & allows them to continue, but also veils the nature of social & political changes required to stop them. Depoliticized language leads to ineffective resistance.

@vocalfries We need to engage in what @ykomska @mimoyd1 & @Linguacene call ‘linguistic disobedience.’ We need to engage in ‘correction’—to correct ourselves, our peers & especially powerful speakers (like the media)—whenever language oppression is depoliticized.

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene The only time we shouldn’t do this 🙅 is when Indigenous & minoritized people are speaking. They may not always be able to politicize their speech. It may not be safe.

First rule: protect the vulnerable.

But otherwise…

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene We need to:

🎯Center people🧑‍🤝‍🧑

👀 See their suffering 😢

🤔Ask who is causing it? 🤔

🛑 Stop them 🛑

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene Of course, ‘stopping them’ is the complicated part.

But if depoliticized language prevents us from even getting to that point, then that’s a problem.

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene My preferred thinking about how we ‘stop them’ is decolonization.

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…

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene @ChickashaJenny On a more systemic level, we can follow @DrJonathanRosa in thinking about decolonization as a project “…informed by a theory of change that is focused on reconstituting or eradicating systems of domination, such as racial capitalism [&] White supremacy…”

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene @ChickashaJenny @DrJonathanRosa And following @tuckeve & K Wayne Yang, we need to realize that decolonization has to be more than an intellectual exercise.

As @nelsonlflores points out, language activism needs to seek material redistribution (substantive, not just symbolic, change)

doi.org/10.1515/multi-…

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene @ChickashaJenny @DrJonathanRosa @tuckeve @nelsonlflores We can’t decolonize just by saying nice things about oppressed languages.

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…

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene @ChickashaJenny @DrJonathanRosa @tuckeve @nelsonlflores @RokhlK In our still-colonial world order, we can’t assume that decolonization will look the same everywhere, because different colonial systems follow different logics. We know a lot about decolonization 4 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇦🇺🇳🇿

but less 4 🇨🇳🇮🇳🇷🇺🇳🇬

This needs to change.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@vocalfries @ykomska @mimoyd1 @Linguacene @ChickashaJenny @DrJonathanRosa @tuckeve @nelsonlflores @RokhlK Decolonization 4 linguistic justice needs politicized language.

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/