Linguistic Inequality Quotes

Black English is something which - it's a natural system in itself. And even though it is a dialect of English, it can be very difficult for people who don't speak it, or who haven't been raised in it, to understand when it's running by quickly, spoken in particular by young men colloquially to each other. So that really is an issue.

Language remains a formidable frontier in the legacy of slavery.

Whoever has power takes over the noun - and the norm - while the less powerful get an adjective.

Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?

The study of gender and language might seem at first to be a narrowly focused field, but it is actually as interdisciplinary as they come.

I don't understand why the accent you speak in has to indicate what level of intellect you have.

In many patriarchies, language, as well as cultural tradition, reserve the human condition for the male. With the Indo-European languages this is a nearly inescapable habit of mind, for despite all the customary pretense that 'man' and 'humanity' are terms which apply equally to both sexes, the fact is hardly obscured that in practice, general application favors the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole referent, for such designations.

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

Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision.

anything being perceived as being superior takes the noun. And everything that isn't, that's judged to be inferior, requires an adjective. So there are black novelists and novelists. There are women physicians and physicians. Male nurses and nurses.

It's actually reassuring to see people struggling to do our accent instead of us constantly trying to emulate British or American accents, which we are always asked to do.