Linguistic Discrimination Quotes

The one thing that no Anglo-Saxon can stand is to be ruled by someone who 'talks fancy' by using Latinate words too often.

A person who speaks good English in New York sounds like a foreigner.

Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.

I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.

There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans--who were not allowed to learn to read and write--and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.

I went to Glenalmond and got the piss taken out of me for my Glasgow accent. Then I spent five years at this very posh school, came out sounding like Prince Charles, which you have to do in order to survive, and then I got called Lord Fauntleroy for the first six months at art school.

We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.

Children, and sometimes those of larger growth, will not read dialect.

Language usage always has a political context.

Dialect words—those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

All nationalistic distinctions - all claims to be better than somebody else because you have a different-shaped skull or speak a different dialect - are entirely spurious, but they are important so long as people believe in them.

There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.

The attempt to suppress new religious, linguistic, cultural, intellectual and political developments during past centuries was the cause of all major wars.

A lot of folks that ain't saying 'ain't,' ain't eating.

Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days, that if you use studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies.

It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?

I see comments occasionally about the way I speak but it goes straight over my head. You speak the way you speak and it is a silly thing to judge someone on.

Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the synonyms of the word Black. It's always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word White, it's always something pure, high and clean.

Most educated Indians are bilingual. Amongst the urban elite though, there is a disdain for regional languages. That's unfortunate.

One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid Creole and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it.