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Language-Based Discrimination

Blatant and Subtle Forms

City University of Hong Kong, sikhung.ng{at}cityu.edu.hk

This article integrates the language-discrimination nexus under four headings: the linguistic justification of discrimination and its linguistic encoding, enactment, and routinization. (a) Barriers to jobs, education, and citizenship can be legally justified on the basis of language requirements to exclude particular groups. Once legalized, the language requirement provides a stowaway for more subtle discrimination against other target groups. (b) Language is a cultural repository of ideas for portraying particular out-groups. These ideas and the language in which they are encoded reflect power inequalities and associated discriminations (e.g., sexist, racist, and ageist languages). (c) Language can be manipulated to produce linguistic masking devices that, when coupled with the choice of verbs to influence the attribution of causality, offer tools for subtly enacting discrimination while masking reality and reducing perceived conflict of interest. (d) Language routinizes (normalizes) discrimination by turning discriminatory scripts and practices into part of taken-for-granted, everyday discourse.

Key Words: linguistic justification • encoding • enactment and routinization of discrimination • power and language

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