(C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace

Linguistic racism explores the varied ideologies that may generate and endorse monolingual, native, and normative language practices, while reinforcing the discrimination and injustice directed towards language users whose language and communicative repertoires are not necessarily perceived as stand...

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Main Authors: Tankosic, Ana, Dovchin, Sender
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE180100118
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/91494
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author Tankosic, Ana
Dovchin, Sender
author_facet Tankosic, Ana
Dovchin, Sender
author_sort Tankosic, Ana
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Linguistic racism explores the varied ideologies that may generate and endorse monolingual, native, and normative language practices, while reinforcing the discrimination and injustice directed towards language users whose language and communicative repertoires are not necessarily perceived as standard and normal. This article, thus, investigates linguistic racism, as a form of existing, but newly defined, racism against unconventional ethnic language practices experienced by Eastern-European immigrant women in the Australian workplace. Our ethnographic study shows that, once these women directly or subtly exhibit their non-nativism, through a limited encounter with local expressions, non-native language skills, and ethnic accents, they become victims of covert and overt linguistic racism in the form of social exclusion, mockery, mimicking, and malicious sarcasm in the hierarchical power environment of the workplace. As a result, these migrants can suffer from long-lasting psychological trauma and distress, emotional hurdles, loss of credibility, and language-based inferiority complexes. We, as researchers, need to highlight the importance of combatting workplace linguistic racism and revealing language realities of underprivileged communities. In that way, we can assist them in adapting to host societies and help them regain some degree of power equality in their institutional environments.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-914942023-05-09T05:26:32Z (C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace Tankosic, Ana Dovchin, Sender Social Sciences Ethnic Studies Linguistic racism overt linguistic racism covert linguistic racism Eastern-European immigrants ethnic accent local expressions emotional distress psychological trauma language inferiority complexes DISCRIMINATION INTEGRATION NARRATIVES SOMEONE WORK DONT Linguistic racism explores the varied ideologies that may generate and endorse monolingual, native, and normative language practices, while reinforcing the discrimination and injustice directed towards language users whose language and communicative repertoires are not necessarily perceived as standard and normal. This article, thus, investigates linguistic racism, as a form of existing, but newly defined, racism against unconventional ethnic language practices experienced by Eastern-European immigrant women in the Australian workplace. Our ethnographic study shows that, once these women directly or subtly exhibit their non-nativism, through a limited encounter with local expressions, non-native language skills, and ethnic accents, they become victims of covert and overt linguistic racism in the form of social exclusion, mockery, mimicking, and malicious sarcasm in the hierarchical power environment of the workplace. As a result, these migrants can suffer from long-lasting psychological trauma and distress, emotional hurdles, loss of credibility, and language-based inferiority complexes. We, as researchers, need to highlight the importance of combatting workplace linguistic racism and revealing language realities of underprivileged communities. In that way, we can assist them in adapting to host societies and help them regain some degree of power equality in their institutional environments. 2021 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/91494 10.1177/14687968211005104 English http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE180100118 SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD fulltext
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Ethnic Studies
Linguistic racism
overt linguistic racism
covert linguistic racism
Eastern-European immigrants
ethnic accent
local expressions
emotional distress
psychological trauma
language inferiority complexes
DISCRIMINATION
INTEGRATION
NARRATIVES
SOMEONE
WORK
DONT
Tankosic, Ana
Dovchin, Sender
(C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace
title (C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace
title_full (C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace
title_fullStr (C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace
title_full_unstemmed (C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace
title_short (C)overt linguistic racism: Eastern-European background immigrant women in the Australian workplace
title_sort (c)overt linguistic racism: eastern-european background immigrant women in the australian workplace
topic Social Sciences
Ethnic Studies
Linguistic racism
overt linguistic racism
covert linguistic racism
Eastern-European immigrants
ethnic accent
local expressions
emotional distress
psychological trauma
language inferiority complexes
DISCRIMINATION
INTEGRATION
NARRATIVES
SOMEONE
WORK
DONT
url http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE180100118
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/91494