This guide is a resource for faculty and students interested in language justice and its intersection with visual art, design and racial and social justice. These resources were compiled alongside curriculum from the Colloquium for International Graduate Students and the Global Arts continuing education courses that center language and culture in creative practice, aiming for an equitable exchange of strategies and resources across borders.
Linguistic discrimination is unfair treatment which is based on use of language and characteristics of speech, including first language, accent, perceived size of vocabulary (whether the speaker uses complex and varied words), modality, and syntax.
The form of the "open letter" is relevant to the question of language because language both reflects and constructs ideology. Open letters serve as important cultural documents that artists need to be able to read, understand and possibly emulate as their own form of political expression.
An early definition of the Translingual approach was defined in the January 2011 issue of College English as, "see[ing] difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening."
From EAL Journal: What is translanguaging?
" ‘Translanguaging’ – the use of different languages together – can be a powerful tool for learning … but it can also go against the grain for language teachers who are used to supporting learners to master the intricacies of a single language. "
Poet Latasha N. Nevada Diggs knows no linguistic border and samples multiple languages in her work highlighting the crossovers and connections that exist in the diverse ways we communicate.
Language justice comes into play with works that rely on language to make a political statement. Hank Willis-Thomas' 'I Am a Man,' installation revisits the 1968 sanitation worker strike in Memphis. How can these kinds of works be deconstructed in ways that broaden artists' conceptual and practical frameworks for language, justice, and the intersection between them?
John Cage is an artist who literally and figuratively experiments with composition in his experimental writing practice.
The free Englishes Massive Open Online Course deals with the language that is used as a medium of expression, mediation and education in artistic practices around the world. Its aim is to emancipate art makers and their audience from having to measure their English along native-like standards in the international realm.
Crossing Borders, Making Connections: Interdisciplinarity in Linguistics by Allison Burkette and Tamara Warhol