Linguistic racism in Canada; how it has reared its ugly head in more visible ways

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“Where are you from?”

“You speak English well for someone who looks like you.”

“You don’t sound Black.”

Canada is a multicultural country, and Canadians come from a vast range of: nations, races, religions and heritage, and as a result, a diverse population is now one of the distinctive features of Canadian society.

It is unfortunate that amongst the main forms of racism that exist in Canada, there is one specific type that is not highlighted or discussed. It is a form of discrimination that targets the cultural and linguistic practices of the BIPOC community. It is when languages and variations are undervalued and seen as inferior to dominant, mainstream languages, such as standard English used predominantly by White, affluent members of society.

Linguistic racism has reared its ugly head in more visible ways recently. These racist acts can be overt or covert in nature. On an overt level, others may openly mock speakers. On a covert level, they may be told that they are unintelligible because they speak with an accent.

In extreme cases, speakers of minoritized languages have been told to undergo accent reduction training so they can become intelligible and therefore be understood by others. These offers are disguised and framed as “friendly advice” supposedly with good intentions of helping an individual advance socially.

I came across a research study that focused on this topic and shed light on “Social‑Cognitive and Affective Antecedents of Code Switching and the Consequences of Linguistic Racism for Black People and People of Color.” In the review, they explicitly link a racial linguistic perspective that examines the on-going social and historically constructed relationship between language and race in the minds of perceivers and some psychological mechanisms that may be involved in the linguistic choices people make, and the consequences of these linguistic choices.

On a day-to-day basis, people make decisions about how to linguistically present themselves to others in order to avoid discrimination. Doing this may:

• Diminish the congruence between a person’s perceived authentic self and outward presentation
• Require additional cognitive effort
• Result in added stress and negative health effects

It is why BIPOC individuals who live in North America may revert to code switching. Code switching describes the act of alternating between languages, or dialects of the same language (Gumperz, 1977). It is practiced at the individual level, and at the level of a community, and aids in establishing social boundaries during interactions and between group members.

Related constructs to code switching within psychology include:

• Cross-cultural code switching
• Cultural frame switchings
• Shifting
• Passing

All of these constructs involved the idea of altering aspects of oneself (e.g., speech, behaviour, mannerisms) in service of conforming to context-specific standards of appropriateness (Flores & Rosa, 2015).

Although code switching has received little attention in affective science, recent theoretical and empirical work has shed some light on decisions people make about how they are linguistically present in society. You would be surprised at the extent that people manage their own impressions in the eyes of others while also figuring out the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of one’s interaction.

So, now that we have placed a spotlight on this topic, how do we tackle this at the societal level?

A good starting point would be to acknowledge the existence of a race-biased monolingual standard ideology that favours white, affluent mainstream speakers. We need to recognize that it is not uncommon for multilingual speakers to shuttle back and forth between different languages and language varieties when they communicate with other multilingual speakers.

In the long term, linguistic shame and guilt must be replaced by linguistic pride. Embracing and harnessing different languages and language varieties can be a win-win situation for everyone.