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Jonathan Rosa

Stanford University, Graduate School of Education, Faculty Member

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As a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist, my work theorizes the co-naturalization of language and race as an organizing dynamic within modern governance. Specifically, I track colonially structured interrelations among racial marginalization, linguistic stigmatization, and institutional inequity. I collaborate with local communities to investigate these phenomena and develop tools for understanding and challenging the forms of vulnerability to which they correspond. This community-based approach to research, teaching, and service reflects a vision of scholarship as a platform for imagining and enacting more just societies.

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Papers by Jonathan Rosa

Undoing raciolinguistics, unsettling (socio)linguistics

Journal of Sociolinguistics , 2023

In this brief commentary, we focus specifically on three interrelated themes that emerge across t... more

Premises, Pitfalls, and Possibilities of Undoing Competence: A Response to Open Peer Commentaries

Language Learning , 2023

We are encouraged by growing interest in critical examinations of the origins of applied linguist... more We are encouraged by growing interest in critical examinations of the origins of applied linguistics as a point of entry for reconsidering some of its key frameworks. This commitment to interrogating intellectual origins is central to Heller and McElhinny's (2017) expansive analysis of how modern paradigms and fields of language study have taken shape in conjunction with capitalist, colonial, and imperial expansion. Central to this line of investigation is critical engagement with progress narratives connected to discourses of linguistic and communicative competence. Specifically, Heller and McElhinny noted the shift from a deficit to difference paradigm that coincided with Hymes's (1966) initial articulation of communicative competence as well as how subsequent paradigms focused on dominance have questioned the analysis of power and theory of change that informed both deficit and difference approaches. In our attention to how conceptualizations of communicative competence reconfigure the racist exclusions of universalizing liberal humanism and pathologizations associated with culture of poverty frameworks, we sought to build on this attention to dominance, including work by colleagues who have critically engaged with neoliberal discourses of competence across global contexts and communicative modalities (Kubota & Takeda, 2020; Norton, 1995; Park, 2010).

Deshaciendo la raciolingüística

Journal of Sociolinguistics , 2023

En este comentario, discutimos las trampas comunes asociadas con el estudio de la raza y el lengu... more En este comentario, discutimos las trampas comunes asociadas con el estudio de la raza y el lenguaje, centrándonos específicamente en la reciente aparición de la raciolingüística como marco para estos esfuerzos. Examinamos cómo la raciolingüística puede ser abordada de maneras que aíslan las discusiones sobre la raza del resto de la lingüística -como si fuera algo que solo hacen los “raciolingüistas”- de modo que el estudio cuidadoso
de cuestiones que incluyen el colonialismo, el poder y las jerarquías sociales quede perpetuamente relegado a los márgenes del campo. También consideramos cómo la nominalización de la raciolingüística puede sugerir que la raza y el lenguaje son objetos consensuados de maneras en las que se reproducen esencializaciones problemáticas. Mostramos cómo una perspectiva raciolingüística puede resistir tales tendencias al interrogar continuamente la reproducción colonial y la transformación de proyectos
de conocimiento moderno y formas de vida a lo largo de contextos sociales, así como al examinar constantemente la naturaleza fundamental del lenguaje, la raza y el poder. Concluimos con lo que consideramos las implicaciones de una perspectiva raciolingüística para toda la lingüística.

Undoing Raciolinguistics

Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2023

In this commentary, we discuss common pitfalls associated with the study of race and language, fo... more In this commentary, we discuss common pitfalls associated with the study of race and language, focusing specifically on the recent emergence of raciolinguistics as a frame for these efforts. We examine how raciolinguistics can be taken up in ways that silo discussions of race from the rest of linguistics—as something that the “raciolinguists” do—such that careful study of issues including colonialism, power, and societal hierarchies is perpetually pushed to the margins of the field. We also consider how the nominalization of raciolinguistics can suggest that race and language are agreed upon objects in ways that reproduce troublesome essentializations. We show how a raciolinguistic perspective can resist such tendencies by continually interrogating the colonial reproduction and transformation of modern knowledge projects and lifeways across societal contexts, as well as by continually examining the fundamental nature of language, race, and power. We end with what we see as the implications of a raciolinguistic perspective for all of linguistics.

Rethinking Language Barriers & Social Justice from a Raciolinguistic Perspective

Dædalus, 2023

The trope of language barriers and the toppling thereof is widely resonant as a reference point f... more The trope of language barriers and the toppling thereof is widely resonant as a reference point for societal progress. Central to this trope is a misleading debate between advocates of linguistic assimilation and pluralism, both sides of which deceptively normalize dominant power structures by approaching language as an isolated site of remediation. In this essay, we invite a reconsideration of how particular populations and language practices are persistently marked, surveilled, and managed. We show how perceptions of linguistic diversity become sites for the reproduction of marginalization and exclusion, as well as how advocacy for language and social justice must move beyond celebrating linguistic diversity or remediating it. We argue that by interrogating the colonial and imperial underpinnings of widespread ideas about linguistic diversity, we can connect linguistic advocacy to broader political struggles. We suggest that language and social justice efforts must link affirmations of linguistic diversity to demands for the creation of societal structures that sustain collective well-being.

Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics

Language Learning , 2022

Conceptualizations of competence that permeate applied linguistics systematically fail to account... more Conceptualizations of competence that permeate applied linguistics systematically fail to account for the role of racialization in language learning and assessments thereof. To interrogate the racialization of linguistic competence, we first examine its discursive emergence in conjunction with the ideological construction of linguistic homogeneity as central to the naturalization of race within the context of European colonialism. We then track how ideas about linguistic competence took shape jointly with a genre of the human that is overrepresented as white, as well as how this particular genre of the human informed foundational conceptualizations of communicative competence. After analyzing relevant examples of how communicative competence has been taken up in ways that reify this racializing ideology, we end with an alternative conceptualization of the goals of language learning that focuses on the worldviews and lifeways of racialized communities to move beyond universalizing conceptions of competence as the desired outcome.

Introduction: Language and White Supremacy

by Jonathan Rosa and Krystal Smalls

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology , 2021

The introduction to this special issue frames White supremacy as a central concern within linguis... more The introduction to this special issue frames White supremacy as a central concern within linguistic anthropology, both as a focus of analysis and as a power structure that has profoundly shaped the field's logics and demographics. We emphasize how carefully attending to language, discourse, and signs can productively illuminate White supremacy's slippery logics, organizing principles, dynamic infrastructures, and diverse practices. Centering the role of White supremacy in constituting modern sign relations can contribute significantly to linguistic anthropologists' efforts toward understanding historical and contemporary power structures that organize the dynamic yet systematic interplay between language and context. We hope that this special issue builds constructively on longstanding and more recent linguistic anthropological work that has led us to reconsider the fundamental relationship between language, race, and culture while also pushing our field in important new directions by reconsidering the fundamental relationship between language and racism as a strategy for understanding and contributing to efforts toward combating White supremacy. [anti-Blackness, language, racism, White supremacy]

Diasporic Signs: Puerto Rican Place-Making, Latinx Artivism, and the Aesthetics of Resistance

Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades, 2022

This chapter analyzes the controversy surrounding the creation of a celebratory diasporic Puerto ... more This chapter analyzes the controversy surrounding the creation of a celebratory diasporic Puerto Rican public art installation in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which became a contentious claim to space in a deeply stratified community. This effort, resulting in a broader debate about the public display of artwork affirming Puerto Ricanness within Holyoke, received national media attention focused on the censorship of Puerto Rican identity and eventually led to a citywide ban on public art. However, through the collaborative efforts of local artists and activists, the installation is currently displayed outside of Holyoke’s city hall and represents a momentous victory for the city’s Puerto Rican community. Thus, artivism—the interplay between political struggles and aesthetic practices—can become a powerful vehicle for social change. We explore a set of ethnographic refusals through Puerto Rican placemaking and Latinx artivism, which we suggest become crucial sites for redefining diasporic community, solidarity, and political belonging.

Decolonization, Language, and Race in Applied Linguistics and Social Justice

Applied Linguistics , 2021

While applied linguistics research can serve as an important site for understanding and contribut... more While applied linguistics research can serve as an important site for understanding and contributing to efforts toward challenging historical and contemporary power structures, it is also crucial to interrogate how numerous normative concepts and logics within the field of applied linguistics both reflect and reenact dominant power structures. Centering colonialism and racism in our analysis, this commentary considers how applied linguistics often focuses on modest reforms supporting affirmation and inclusion of marginalized populations and practices, rather than on fundamental institutional changes required to eradicate the forces that produce marginalization. As applied linguists grapple with questions surrounding the extent to which their work contributes in substantive ways to social justice struggles, we are inspired by collaborations that challenge us to reconsider normative assumptions about both language and justice. These collaborations demand a comprehensive reckoning that frames social justice not as a normative reality that can be achieved through modest reforms to liberal governance, but rather as an existential horizon that necessitates a fundamental reimagination of communication’s role in narrating and creating decolonial worlds that sustain collective well-being.

Language and Race/Ethnicity

International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 2020

Linguistic anthropologists have carefully studied race and ethnicity in relation to distinctive d... more Linguistic anthropologists have carefully studied race and ethnicity in relation to distinctive demographic groups and nation-state contexts, connecting examinations of language patterns associated with particular populations to endemic structures of power. Whereas initial inquiries into language, race, and ethnicity sought to challenge stigmatizing assumptions about minoritized language varieties on the one hand, and track linguistic practices stereotypically associated with distinctive ethnoracial groups on the other, subsequent research has extended this work to understand racialization and ethnicization as fraught ideological processes of identity formation and boundary negotiation. More recently, efforts to conceptualize the co-naturalization of language, race, and ethnicity have interrogated intersections among various modalities of marginalization, with a broader goal of developing theories of change that reconsider the relationship between language and social justice.

Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto

by Jonathan Rosa, Kate Seltzer, and Li Wei

Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 2021

Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thi... more Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thinking” that erases the existence of counter-hegemonic knowledges and lifeways, adopting instead the “from the inside out” perspective that is required for thinking constructively about the language and education of racialized bilinguals. On the basis of deep personal experience and extensive field-work research, we challenge prevailing assumptions about language, bilingualism, and education that are based on raciolinguistic ideologies with roots in colonialism. Adopting a translanguaging perspective that rejects rigid colonial boundaries of named languages, we argue that racialized bilingual learners, like all students, draw from linguistic-semiotic, cultural, and historical repertoires. The decolonial approach that guides our work reveals these students making a world by means of cultural and linguistic practices derived from their own knowledge systems. We propose that in order to attain justice and success, a decolonial education must center non-hegemonic modes of “otherwise thinking” by attending to racialized bilinguals’ knowledges and abilities that have always existed yet have continually been distorted and erased through abyssal thinking. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15427587.2021.1935957)

Applied Linguistic Anthropology: Balancing Social Science with Social Change

by Jonathan Rosa and Eric Johnson

Extending Applied Linguistics for Social Impact: Cross-Disciplinary Collaborations in Diverse Spaces of Public Inquiry, 2021

This chapter features four applied linguistic anthropology case studies, highlighting how interdi... more This chapter features four applied linguistic anthropology case studies, highlighting how interdisciplinary scholars of language can acknowledge their positionalities, engage in in-depth examination of particular language-related issues, and mobilize to advocate for social change. We will discuss the inherent dilemmas involved in applied linguistic anthropology, including asking who our publics are, what "change" we seek to effect, how identifying the nature of "change" may help us determine if we are "successful" in moving toward social justice, and recognizing that language-related issues are never only about language-they are about ideologies, perceptions, experiences, practices, and histories of both powerful and marginalized groups. These four case studies stem from collaborative work of the American Anthropological Association's Society for Linguistic Anthropology Task Group on Language and Social Justice, an interdisciplinary group of publicly engaged scholars who collaboratively tackle language and social justice issues.

Raciontologies: Rethinking Anthropological Accounts of Institutional Racism and Enactments of White Supremacy in the United States

by Jonathan Rosa and Vanessa Diaz

American Anthropologist, 2020

This article presents a theory of raciontologies—the fundamentally racialized grounding of variou... more This article presents a theory of raciontologies—the fundamentally racialized grounding of various states of being—that sheds light on complex forms of institutional racism and white supremacy. We are interested in exploring not only how institutional contexts and processes function as sites or vehicles for the reproduction of white supremacy but more specifically how institutions become endowed with the capacity to act in their own right. This approach represents a raciontological perspective that attends to the central role that race plays in constituting modern subjects and objects in relation to particular states of being. Raciolontologies powerfully shape how entities become endowed with the capacity to engage in particular acts, while also conditioning perceptions, experiences, and material groundings of reality. Our theorization of raciontologies combines anthropological analyses of institutional racism and ontologies beyond the human. These analyses point to the role of institutions in the reproduction of white supremacy and reimagine the range of entities capable of action, respectively. The broader goal is to suggest how new ways of understanding the raciontological nature of institutional enactments of white supremacy can inform antiracist theories of change. [race, ontology, institutional racism, white supremacy]

RESUMEN Este artículo presenta una teoría de raciontologías—la base fundamentalmente racializada de varios estados del ser—que arroja luz sobre las formas complejas del racismo institucional y la supremacía blanca. Estamos interesados en explorar no s ´ olo las formas en que los contextos institucionales y los procesos funcionan como sitios o vehículos para la reproduccí on de la supremacía blanca, sino m ´ as específicamente c ´ omo las instituciones llegan a estar dotadas de la capacidad de actuar en su propio derecho. Esta aproximací on representa una perspectiva raciontoí ogica que atiende al rol central que la raza juega en constituir sujetos modernos y objetos en relací on a estados particulares del ser. Las raciontologías poderosamente dan forma a c ´ omo entidades llegan a estar dotadas de la capacidad de involucrarse en actos particulares, mientras que tambí en condicionando percepciones, experi-encias y las bases materiales de la realidad. Nuestra teorizací on de raciontologías combina el análisisan´análisis del racismo institucional y las ontologías m ´ as alí a de lo humano. Estos análisisan´análisis señalanse˜señalan el rol de las instituciones en la repro-duccí on de la supremacía blanca y reimaginan el rango de entidades capaces de accí on, respectivamente. La meta m ´ as amplia es sugerir c ´ omo nuevas formas de entendimiento de la naturaleza raciontoí ogica de las actuaciones institucionales de la supremacía blanca pueden informar teorías antirracistas de cambio. [raza, ontología, racismo institucional, supremacía blanca]

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad, 2019

Contesting Representations of Migrant "Illegality" through the Drop the I-Word Campaign: Rethinking Language Change and Social Change

Language and Social Justice in Practice, 2019

This chapter analyzes the “Drop the I-Word Campaign,” a language and social justice initiative ca... more This chapter analyzes the “Drop the I-Word Campaign,” a language and social justice initiative calling for media outlets and broader publics to refrain from using the term “illegal” in representations of (im)migration. The “Drop the I-Word” campaign resonates with a central tenet of linguistic anthropology: language is not merely a passive way of referring to or describing things in the world, but a crucial form of social action. While language change is not necessarily equivalent to broader social change, struggles over representations of (im)migration can contribute to efforts toward imagining and establishing migration as a fundamental human right.

Introduction: Reimagining Language and Social Justice

Language and Social Justice in Practice, 2019

known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage ... more

Nunca hemos dicho la verdad: Impugnaciones digitales de la realidad y la supuesta posverdad en la era Trump

Anuario de Glotopolítica , 2019

Bringing Race Into Second Language Acquisition

The Modern Language Journal , 2019

Community as a Campus: From "Problems" to Possibilities in Latinx Communities

Civic Engagement in Diverse Latinx Communities: Learning from Social Justice Partnerships in Action. Joseph Krupczynski and Mari Castañeda (eds.). New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 111-123., 2018

This chapter points to the exciting possibilities that emerge when we shift from viewing marginal... more This chapter points to the exciting possibilities that emerge when we shift from viewing marginalized communities as static objects of academic analysis to dynamic sites of collaborative knowledge production. In order to do so, it analyzes a collaborative project bringing together a professor and undergraduate students in a university Latinx Studies course with a teacher and students in a predominantly Latinx high school. In this project, titled VOCES (Voicing Our Community in English and Spanish), the university professor and high school teacher worked collaboratively as co-instructors and the university students and high school students worked collaboratively as co-learners. The goal of the project was to learn ethnographic research skills to document and analyze the marginalization of particular language practices in a predominantly Latinx community where linguistic diversity is often viewed as a handicap from mainstream perspectives. By approaching this community as a campus, the students and teachers were able to work together to present an alternative view of this stigmatized community that highlights not only the vast challenges that it faces, but also the resilience and ingenuity of its residents.

Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective

by Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores

Language in Society, 2017

This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical ... more This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical and contemporary co-naturalization of language and race. Rather than taking for granted existing categories for parsing and classifying race and language, we seek to understand how and why these categories have been co-naturalized, and to imagine their denaturalization as part of a broader structural project of contesting white supremacy. We explore five key components of a raciolinguistic perspective: (i) historical and contemporary colonial co-naturalizations of race and language; (ii) perceptions of racial and linguistic difference; (iii) regimentations of racial and linguistic categories; (iv) racial and linguistic intersections and assemblages; and (v) contestations of racial and linguistic power formations. These foci reflect our investment in developing a careful theorization of various forms of racial and linguistic inequality on the one hand, and our commitment to the imagination and creation of more just societies on the other. (Race, language ideologies, colonialism, governmentality, enregisterment, structural inequality)*

Undoing raciolinguistics, unsettling (socio)linguistics

Journal of Sociolinguistics , 2023

In this brief commentary, we focus specifically on three interrelated themes that emerge across t... more

Premises, Pitfalls, and Possibilities of Undoing Competence: A Response to Open Peer Commentaries

Language Learning , 2023

We are encouraged by growing interest in critical examinations of the origins of applied linguist... more We are encouraged by growing interest in critical examinations of the origins of applied linguistics as a point of entry for reconsidering some of its key frameworks. This commitment to interrogating intellectual origins is central to Heller and McElhinny's (2017) expansive analysis of how modern paradigms and fields of language study have taken shape in conjunction with capitalist, colonial, and imperial expansion. Central to this line of investigation is critical engagement with progress narratives connected to discourses of linguistic and communicative competence. Specifically, Heller and McElhinny noted the shift from a deficit to difference paradigm that coincided with Hymes's (1966) initial articulation of communicative competence as well as how subsequent paradigms focused on dominance have questioned the analysis of power and theory of change that informed both deficit and difference approaches. In our attention to how conceptualizations of communicative competence reconfigure the racist exclusions of universalizing liberal humanism and pathologizations associated with culture of poverty frameworks, we sought to build on this attention to dominance, including work by colleagues who have critically engaged with neoliberal discourses of competence across global contexts and communicative modalities (Kubota & Takeda, 2020; Norton, 1995; Park, 2010).

Deshaciendo la raciolingüística

Journal of Sociolinguistics , 2023

En este comentario, discutimos las trampas comunes asociadas con el estudio de la raza y el lengu... more En este comentario, discutimos las trampas comunes asociadas con el estudio de la raza y el lenguaje, centrándonos específicamente en la reciente aparición de la raciolingüística como marco para estos esfuerzos. Examinamos cómo la raciolingüística puede ser abordada de maneras que aíslan las discusiones sobre la raza del resto de la lingüística -como si fuera algo que solo hacen los “raciolingüistas”- de modo que el estudio cuidadoso
de cuestiones que incluyen el colonialismo, el poder y las jerarquías sociales quede perpetuamente relegado a los márgenes del campo. También consideramos cómo la nominalización de la raciolingüística puede sugerir que la raza y el lenguaje son objetos consensuados de maneras en las que se reproducen esencializaciones problemáticas. Mostramos cómo una perspectiva raciolingüística puede resistir tales tendencias al interrogar continuamente la reproducción colonial y la transformación de proyectos
de conocimiento moderno y formas de vida a lo largo de contextos sociales, así como al examinar constantemente la naturaleza fundamental del lenguaje, la raza y el poder. Concluimos con lo que consideramos las implicaciones de una perspectiva raciolingüística para toda la lingüística.

Undoing Raciolinguistics

Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2023

In this commentary, we discuss common pitfalls associated with the study of race and language, fo... more In this commentary, we discuss common pitfalls associated with the study of race and language, focusing specifically on the recent emergence of raciolinguistics as a frame for these efforts. We examine how raciolinguistics can be taken up in ways that silo discussions of race from the rest of linguistics—as something that the “raciolinguists” do—such that careful study of issues including colonialism, power, and societal hierarchies is perpetually pushed to the margins of the field. We also consider how the nominalization of raciolinguistics can suggest that race and language are agreed upon objects in ways that reproduce troublesome essentializations. We show how a raciolinguistic perspective can resist such tendencies by continually interrogating the colonial reproduction and transformation of modern knowledge projects and lifeways across societal contexts, as well as by continually examining the fundamental nature of language, race, and power. We end with what we see as the implications of a raciolinguistic perspective for all of linguistics.

Rethinking Language Barriers & Social Justice from a Raciolinguistic Perspective

Dædalus, 2023

The trope of language barriers and the toppling thereof is widely resonant as a reference point f... more The trope of language barriers and the toppling thereof is widely resonant as a reference point for societal progress. Central to this trope is a misleading debate between advocates of linguistic assimilation and pluralism, both sides of which deceptively normalize dominant power structures by approaching language as an isolated site of remediation. In this essay, we invite a reconsideration of how particular populations and language practices are persistently marked, surveilled, and managed. We show how perceptions of linguistic diversity become sites for the reproduction of marginalization and exclusion, as well as how advocacy for language and social justice must move beyond celebrating linguistic diversity or remediating it. We argue that by interrogating the colonial and imperial underpinnings of widespread ideas about linguistic diversity, we can connect linguistic advocacy to broader political struggles. We suggest that language and social justice efforts must link affirmations of linguistic diversity to demands for the creation of societal structures that sustain collective well-being.

Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics

Language Learning , 2022

Conceptualizations of competence that permeate applied linguistics systematically fail to account... more Conceptualizations of competence that permeate applied linguistics systematically fail to account for the role of racialization in language learning and assessments thereof. To interrogate the racialization of linguistic competence, we first examine its discursive emergence in conjunction with the ideological construction of linguistic homogeneity as central to the naturalization of race within the context of European colonialism. We then track how ideas about linguistic competence took shape jointly with a genre of the human that is overrepresented as white, as well as how this particular genre of the human informed foundational conceptualizations of communicative competence. After analyzing relevant examples of how communicative competence has been taken up in ways that reify this racializing ideology, we end with an alternative conceptualization of the goals of language learning that focuses on the worldviews and lifeways of racialized communities to move beyond universalizing conceptions of competence as the desired outcome.

Introduction: Language and White Supremacy

by Jonathan Rosa and Krystal Smalls

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology , 2021

The introduction to this special issue frames White supremacy as a central concern within linguis... more The introduction to this special issue frames White supremacy as a central concern within linguistic anthropology, both as a focus of analysis and as a power structure that has profoundly shaped the field's logics and demographics. We emphasize how carefully attending to language, discourse, and signs can productively illuminate White supremacy's slippery logics, organizing principles, dynamic infrastructures, and diverse practices. Centering the role of White supremacy in constituting modern sign relations can contribute significantly to linguistic anthropologists' efforts toward understanding historical and contemporary power structures that organize the dynamic yet systematic interplay between language and context. We hope that this special issue builds constructively on longstanding and more recent linguistic anthropological work that has led us to reconsider the fundamental relationship between language, race, and culture while also pushing our field in important new directions by reconsidering the fundamental relationship between language and racism as a strategy for understanding and contributing to efforts toward combating White supremacy. [anti-Blackness, language, racism, White supremacy]

Diasporic Signs: Puerto Rican Place-Making, Latinx Artivism, and the Aesthetics of Resistance

Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades, 2022

This chapter analyzes the controversy surrounding the creation of a celebratory diasporic Puerto ... more This chapter analyzes the controversy surrounding the creation of a celebratory diasporic Puerto Rican public art installation in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which became a contentious claim to space in a deeply stratified community. This effort, resulting in a broader debate about the public display of artwork affirming Puerto Ricanness within Holyoke, received national media attention focused on the censorship of Puerto Rican identity and eventually led to a citywide ban on public art. However, through the collaborative efforts of local artists and activists, the installation is currently displayed outside of Holyoke’s city hall and represents a momentous victory for the city’s Puerto Rican community. Thus, artivism—the interplay between political struggles and aesthetic practices—can become a powerful vehicle for social change. We explore a set of ethnographic refusals through Puerto Rican placemaking and Latinx artivism, which we suggest become crucial sites for redefining diasporic community, solidarity, and political belonging.

Decolonization, Language, and Race in Applied Linguistics and Social Justice

Applied Linguistics , 2021

While applied linguistics research can serve as an important site for understanding and contribut... more While applied linguistics research can serve as an important site for understanding and contributing to efforts toward challenging historical and contemporary power structures, it is also crucial to interrogate how numerous normative concepts and logics within the field of applied linguistics both reflect and reenact dominant power structures. Centering colonialism and racism in our analysis, this commentary considers how applied linguistics often focuses on modest reforms supporting affirmation and inclusion of marginalized populations and practices, rather than on fundamental institutional changes required to eradicate the forces that produce marginalization. As applied linguists grapple with questions surrounding the extent to which their work contributes in substantive ways to social justice struggles, we are inspired by collaborations that challenge us to reconsider normative assumptions about both language and justice. These collaborations demand a comprehensive reckoning that frames social justice not as a normative reality that can be achieved through modest reforms to liberal governance, but rather as an existential horizon that necessitates a fundamental reimagination of communication’s role in narrating and creating decolonial worlds that sustain collective well-being.

Language and Race/Ethnicity

International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 2020

Linguistic anthropologists have carefully studied race and ethnicity in relation to distinctive d... more Linguistic anthropologists have carefully studied race and ethnicity in relation to distinctive demographic groups and nation-state contexts, connecting examinations of language patterns associated with particular populations to endemic structures of power. Whereas initial inquiries into language, race, and ethnicity sought to challenge stigmatizing assumptions about minoritized language varieties on the one hand, and track linguistic practices stereotypically associated with distinctive ethnoracial groups on the other, subsequent research has extended this work to understand racialization and ethnicization as fraught ideological processes of identity formation and boundary negotiation. More recently, efforts to conceptualize the co-naturalization of language, race, and ethnicity have interrogated intersections among various modalities of marginalization, with a broader goal of developing theories of change that reconsider the relationship between language and social justice.

Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto

by Jonathan Rosa, Kate Seltzer, and Li Wei

Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 2021

Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thi... more Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thinking” that erases the existence of counter-hegemonic knowledges and lifeways, adopting instead the “from the inside out” perspective that is required for thinking constructively about the language and education of racialized bilinguals. On the basis of deep personal experience and extensive field-work research, we challenge prevailing assumptions about language, bilingualism, and education that are based on raciolinguistic ideologies with roots in colonialism. Adopting a translanguaging perspective that rejects rigid colonial boundaries of named languages, we argue that racialized bilingual learners, like all students, draw from linguistic-semiotic, cultural, and historical repertoires. The decolonial approach that guides our work reveals these students making a world by means of cultural and linguistic practices derived from their own knowledge systems. We propose that in order to attain justice and success, a decolonial education must center non-hegemonic modes of “otherwise thinking” by attending to racialized bilinguals’ knowledges and abilities that have always existed yet have continually been distorted and erased through abyssal thinking. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15427587.2021.1935957)

Applied Linguistic Anthropology: Balancing Social Science with Social Change

by Jonathan Rosa and Eric Johnson

Extending Applied Linguistics for Social Impact: Cross-Disciplinary Collaborations in Diverse Spaces of Public Inquiry, 2021

This chapter features four applied linguistic anthropology case studies, highlighting how interdi... more This chapter features four applied linguistic anthropology case studies, highlighting how interdisciplinary scholars of language can acknowledge their positionalities, engage in in-depth examination of particular language-related issues, and mobilize to advocate for social change. We will discuss the inherent dilemmas involved in applied linguistic anthropology, including asking who our publics are, what "change" we seek to effect, how identifying the nature of "change" may help us determine if we are "successful" in moving toward social justice, and recognizing that language-related issues are never only about language-they are about ideologies, perceptions, experiences, practices, and histories of both powerful and marginalized groups. These four case studies stem from collaborative work of the American Anthropological Association's Society for Linguistic Anthropology Task Group on Language and Social Justice, an interdisciplinary group of publicly engaged scholars who collaboratively tackle language and social justice issues.

Raciontologies: Rethinking Anthropological Accounts of Institutional Racism and Enactments of White Supremacy in the United States

by Jonathan Rosa and Vanessa Diaz

American Anthropologist, 2020

This article presents a theory of raciontologies—the fundamentally racialized grounding of variou... more This article presents a theory of raciontologies—the fundamentally racialized grounding of various states of being—that sheds light on complex forms of institutional racism and white supremacy. We are interested in exploring not only how institutional contexts and processes function as sites or vehicles for the reproduction of white supremacy but more specifically how institutions become endowed with the capacity to act in their own right. This approach represents a raciontological perspective that attends to the central role that race plays in constituting modern subjects and objects in relation to particular states of being. Raciolontologies powerfully shape how entities become endowed with the capacity to engage in particular acts, while also conditioning perceptions, experiences, and material groundings of reality. Our theorization of raciontologies combines anthropological analyses of institutional racism and ontologies beyond the human. These analyses point to the role of institutions in the reproduction of white supremacy and reimagine the range of entities capable of action, respectively. The broader goal is to suggest how new ways of understanding the raciontological nature of institutional enactments of white supremacy can inform antiracist theories of change. [race, ontology, institutional racism, white supremacy]

RESUMEN Este artículo presenta una teoría de raciontologías—la base fundamentalmente racializada de varios estados del ser—que arroja luz sobre las formas complejas del racismo institucional y la supremacía blanca. Estamos interesados en explorar no s ´ olo las formas en que los contextos institucionales y los procesos funcionan como sitios o vehículos para la reproduccí on de la supremacía blanca, sino m ´ as específicamente c ´ omo las instituciones llegan a estar dotadas de la capacidad de actuar en su propio derecho. Esta aproximací on representa una perspectiva raciontoí ogica que atiende al rol central que la raza juega en constituir sujetos modernos y objetos en relací on a estados particulares del ser. Las raciontologías poderosamente dan forma a c ´ omo entidades llegan a estar dotadas de la capacidad de involucrarse en actos particulares, mientras que tambí en condicionando percepciones, experi-encias y las bases materiales de la realidad. Nuestra teorizací on de raciontologías combina el análisisan´análisis del racismo institucional y las ontologías m ´ as alí a de lo humano. Estos análisisan´análisis señalanse˜señalan el rol de las instituciones en la repro-duccí on de la supremacía blanca y reimaginan el rango de entidades capaces de accí on, respectivamente. La meta m ´ as amplia es sugerir c ´ omo nuevas formas de entendimiento de la naturaleza raciontoí ogica de las actuaciones institucionales de la supremacía blanca pueden informar teorías antirracistas de cambio. [raza, ontología, racismo institucional, supremacía blanca]

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad, 2019

Contesting Representations of Migrant "Illegality" through the Drop the I-Word Campaign: Rethinking Language Change and Social Change

Language and Social Justice in Practice, 2019

This chapter analyzes the “Drop the I-Word Campaign,” a language and social justice initiative ca... more This chapter analyzes the “Drop the I-Word Campaign,” a language and social justice initiative calling for media outlets and broader publics to refrain from using the term “illegal” in representations of (im)migration. The “Drop the I-Word” campaign resonates with a central tenet of linguistic anthropology: language is not merely a passive way of referring to or describing things in the world, but a crucial form of social action. While language change is not necessarily equivalent to broader social change, struggles over representations of (im)migration can contribute to efforts toward imagining and establishing migration as a fundamental human right.

Introduction: Reimagining Language and Social Justice

Language and Social Justice in Practice, 2019

known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage ... more

Nunca hemos dicho la verdad: Impugnaciones digitales de la realidad y la supuesta posverdad en la era Trump

Anuario de Glotopolítica , 2019

Bringing Race Into Second Language Acquisition

The Modern Language Journal , 2019

Community as a Campus: From "Problems" to Possibilities in Latinx Communities

Civic Engagement in Diverse Latinx Communities: Learning from Social Justice Partnerships in Action. Joseph Krupczynski and Mari Castañeda (eds.). New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 111-123., 2018

This chapter points to the exciting possibilities that emerge when we shift from viewing marginal... more This chapter points to the exciting possibilities that emerge when we shift from viewing marginalized communities as static objects of academic analysis to dynamic sites of collaborative knowledge production. In order to do so, it analyzes a collaborative project bringing together a professor and undergraduate students in a university Latinx Studies course with a teacher and students in a predominantly Latinx high school. In this project, titled VOCES (Voicing Our Community in English and Spanish), the university professor and high school teacher worked collaboratively as co-instructors and the university students and high school students worked collaboratively as co-learners. The goal of the project was to learn ethnographic research skills to document and analyze the marginalization of particular language practices in a predominantly Latinx community where linguistic diversity is often viewed as a handicap from mainstream perspectives. By approaching this community as a campus, the students and teachers were able to work together to present an alternative view of this stigmatized community that highlights not only the vast challenges that it faces, but also the resilience and ingenuity of its residents.

Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective

by Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores

Language in Society, 2017

This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical ... more This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical and contemporary co-naturalization of language and race. Rather than taking for granted existing categories for parsing and classifying race and language, we seek to understand how and why these categories have been co-naturalized, and to imagine their denaturalization as part of a broader structural project of contesting white supremacy. We explore five key components of a raciolinguistic perspective: (i) historical and contemporary colonial co-naturalizations of race and language; (ii) perceptions of racial and linguistic difference; (iii) regimentations of racial and linguistic categories; (iv) racial and linguistic intersections and assemblages; and (v) contestations of racial and linguistic power formations. These foci reflect our investment in developing a careful theorization of various forms of racial and linguistic inequality on the one hand, and our commitment to the imagination and creation of more just societies on the other. (Race, language ideologies, colonialism, governmentality, enregisterment, structural inequality)*

Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective

by Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores

This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical ... more This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical and contemporary co-naturalization of language and race. Rather than taking for granted existing categories for parsing and classifying race and language, we seek to understand how and why these categories have been co-naturalized, and to imagine their denaturalization as part of a broader structural project of contesting white supremacy. We explore five key components of a raciolinguistic perspective: (i) historical and contemporary colonial co-naturalizations of race and language; (ii) perceptions of racial and linguistic difference; (iii) regimentations of racial and linguistic categories; (iv) racial and linguistic intersections and assemblages; and (v) contestations of racial and linguistic power formations. These foci reflect our investment in developing a careful theorization of various forms of racial and linguistic inequality on the one hand, and our commitment to the imagination and creation of more just societies on the other.

Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education

by Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa

In this article, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa critique appropriateness-based approaches to lan... more In this article, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa critique appropriateness-based approaches to language diversity in education. Those who subscribe to these approaches conceptualize standardized linguistic practices as an objective set of linguistic forms that are appropriate for an academic setting. In contrast, Flores and Rosa highlight the raciolinguistic ideologies through which racialized bodies come to be constructed as engaging in appropriately academic linguistic practices. Drawing on theories of language ideologies and racialization, they offer a perspective from which students classified as long-term English learners, heritage language learners, and Standard English learners can be understood to inhabit a shared racial positioning that frames their linguistic practices as deficient regardless of how closely they follow supposed rules of appropriateness. The authors illustrate how appropriateness-based approaches to language education are implicated in the reproduction of racial normativity by expecting language-minoritized students to model their linguistic practices after the white speaking subject despite the fact that the white listening subject continues to perceive their language use in racialized ways. They conclude with a call for reframing language diversity in education away from a discourse of appropriateness toward one that seeks to denaturalize standardized linguistic categories.

Hearing Language Gaps and Reproducing Social Inequality

by Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores

Part of an Invited Forum: Bridging the "Language Gap"

Do You Hear What I Hear? Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

by Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores

Latinxs & Languages

Writing Race, Ethnicity, and Language in Ethnography

If categories of race, ethnicity, and language are social constructs, how can we represent them e... more If categories of race, ethnicity, and language are social constructs, how can we represent them ethnographically without reifying them? Taking this question as its starting point, this methods seminar analyzes strategies for writing race, ethnicity, and language in ethnography. In that they are simultaneously ubiquitous features of everyday life yet often difficult to articulate with precision, race, ethnicity, and language are highly elusive phenomena. We will read a range of ethnographies that seek to overcome this dilemma by neither taking race, ethnicity, and language for granted as naturally occurring phenomena nor avoiding the complex ways in which they shape interactions, institutions, and identities. In addition to reading various ethnographies, students will conduct their own ethnographic research to test out the authors' contrasting approaches to data collection, analysis, and representation. The goal is for students to develop a rich ethnographic toolkit that will allow them to effectively represent the (re)production and (trans)formation of racial, ethnic, and linguistic phenomena. Guidelines and Requirements 1. Discussion facilitations Each week a group of students will be designated as the discussion facilitators; each student will facilitate discussion during two weeks throughout the quarter. For the weeks in which you sign up to facilitate discussion, you are expected to collaborate with your fellow discussion facilitators to develop a set of discussion questions and a creative way in which to guide the discussion. Your group will prepare a handout with your reflections on the reading(s) and your discussion questions. This handout should be approximately 1-2 single-spaced pages; make enough copies to distribute to everyone in the class on the day of your facilitation. Feel free to bring in any audiovisual media to supplement your handout. There is no possible way that you could get to all of the issues covered in the reading, so focus on whatever ideas interest you most.

Introduction to Latinx Studies

Racial, Ethnic, and Linguistic Formations

This course seeks to examine the joint construction of racial, ethnic, and linguistic categories,... more This course seeks to examine the joint construction of racial, ethnic, and linguistic categories, and interrogate the implications of this relationship across a range of historical, societal, and institutional contexts. We will approach schools as key institutional sites in which racial, ethnic, and linguistic borders are learned, naturalized, contested, and reconfigured. We will also consider how race, ethnicity, and language co-articulate intersectionally within various matrices of power. This effort toward denaturalizing racial, ethnic, and linguistic borders is connected to broader projects of unsettling deeply embedded social hierarchies and reconstituting the institutions through which they are continually reproduced.