Séminaire doctoral – Pratiques langagières – terrains, méthodes, théories

This talk presents the concept of raciolinguistic ideologies and discusses its potential to look at issues related to labor. Focusing on American labor markets, we examine the (re) production of inequality as it materializes in unfair working practices and discourses that naturalize labor discrimination across the region. To do so, we link the current reproduction of social and economic inequality to the interconnection of slavery and capitalism stemming from the colonial projects. In this talk we will explore four overarching themes: the repercussions for vulnerabilized communities of the stratification of the labor market, the ways in which the commodification and decommodification of racialized languages tend to favor powerful social positions, the way in which language authority operates to decide what counts as legitimate languages/speakers; and the need felt by speakers to make discursive sense of raciolinguistic practices and discourses. Finally, we will present as an example the experiences of young Latinx professionals in the US who, inspired by the ideology of the bilingual advantage, expect to profit from their language skills in the job market. We conclude that if neoliberalism highlights the economic value of languages, racialized speakers do not profit from it as traditional racial hierarchies and linguistic authority remain unchallenged.