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Language test
How linguistic racism can hinder your academic career .
By Emilie Lauer
Linguistic racism on campus is affecting international students and researcher ’ s mental health , career prospects and motivation , experts say .
“ On Australian campuses , linguistic racism happens in the form of social exclusion , interpersonal and institutional rejections and other micro aggressions ,” Curtin University associate professor Dr Sender Dovchin said .
Dovchin recently conducted a study on linguistic racism , which designates racism based on how one speaks and writes certain languages and dialects , and found it is pervasive across Australia .
She spoke to Campus Review to shed light how universities can address the issue .
ER : First of all , what is linguistic racism ? SD : Linguistic racism is an emerging term in critical applied linguistics . It has started being used in the last sort of decade or so . We do have a lot of studies in terms of other racism , such as racism against one ’ s skin colour , but we didn ’ t have much research or studies in terms of discrimination against one ’ s language use . So as a critical applied linguist , we started looking at what is really linguistic racism , what harmful things it can do to a society ? So basically , linguistic racism is the violation of an individual ’ s human rights based on how they speak a certain language , or speak in a certain accent or dialect or how they write .
It can also be in an English or in an Australian context . For example , say you are from a French background and you can speak French and English , and then you ’ re also from a Mongolian background , you can speak Mongolian and English , but the Mongolian language can be excluded
We need to start talking about it more often .
because it ’ s not very useful in an Australian context . Whereas French language can be more useful than Mongolian , for example . And also you can be excluded based on how you speak English , how you pronounce English , and how you write English and so forth .
ER : In what way does linguistic racism occur ? Our study shows that it occurs everywhere and also in overt and covered forms . Overt linguistic racism refers to direct or explicit verbal or non-verbal acts and offences such as hate speech , or verbal abuse and physical abuse , including ethnic namecalling bullying and so forth . So this is quite
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