About

The working group on Linguistic bias aims to engage all members of the UW community in the acknowledgment of language diversity on campus and the role of linguistic bias in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The role of language in this can be framed in terms of the endeavor itself:

Diversity: We must acknowledge the value of diverse languages and varieties of those languages on campus.

• Speakers and students of languages other than English or so-called ‘standard’ English face multiple barriers to academic success and inclusion on campus.

Equity: We must recognize that all languages and varieties of languages are equal.

• Speakers of marginalized languages or varieties of languages encounter discrimination based on society’s lack of knowledge of and/or value of their variety. This may be realized in the assessment of written work, face to face interactions, appointments to jobs, etc.
• We must address the campus communities responsibilities with respect to linguistic power imbalances off campus as well (e.g., decolonizing study abroad programs, English proficiency measures for incoming students, competency based credits for less commonly taught languages).

Inclusion: We must welcome the use of all varieties of language in the campus community.

• All members of the campus community have the ability to acknowledge and understand the role of language in personal identity and to deny this is to cause damage.

Recent Activity

Presentations at:
The Social Justice Pedagogies Across Language and Culture Curricula Symposium at the University of Washington (May 2022), Language Latitudes Workshop at University of British Columbia (April/2023) [PDF]

Steering Committee

Betsy Evans (Linguistics)
Russell Hugo (Language Learning Center)
Alex Panicacci (Postdoctoral Researcher)

Current Members

Robyn Davis (Graduate School)

Interested in joining or have questions?

©2021-   |    Email: lxbias@uw.edu