Hello!  Now that I’ve made my confession re: dysconscious linguicism in my previous vlog, I will discuss what linguicism and dysconscious linguicism are.  They are kind of complex concepts, so I will attempt to simplify them and keep this post short and sweet.

LINGUICISM:

What is it?

It’s a form of prejudice that involves an individual making judgments about another’s wealth, education, social status, etc, based on the other’s choice and use of language.  (Wikipedia)

It’s a form of prejudice, an “-ism” , along the lines of racism, ageism, sexism, classism and audism.  (Wikipedia)

This concept is best described in this way:

SCENARIOS:

Two persons are talking. During the course of this conversation, one of the persons is assessing the other’s wealth, quality of education, status in society based on the other person’s use/choice of language or dialect.

A) If the other person shows an excellent command of English, the assessor assumes he is quite well-educated, possibly from a wealthy family, which then indicates an elevated status in society.

B) If that other person shows poor command of the English language, or uses another language, the assessor assumes that  he’s ill-educated, poor, possibly  from a ghetto and therefore from the lower classes in society.

The scenarios described above is linguicism, pure and simple.  How does linguicism as described above apply to the Deaf?

A) When a Deaf person is able to speak English with his voice, or write excellent English, he gets lauded as intelligent and well educated.  This person is considered successful in life.

B) When a Deaf uses ASL (no matter how fluently), but writes mediocre English, and cannot speak English, he is considered intellectually inferior, ill-educated, and guaranteed to fail in life.

This judgement is blatant linguicism.  What is worse, we internalize this attitude and apply it to our own people!

DYSCONSCIOUS LINGUICISM:

What is it?

I will use the terms of racism and audism to aid in understanding the term dysconscious linguicism.

DYSCONSCIOUS RACISM:

A form of racism that accepts dominant white norms and privileges. (Pewewardy)

If one is Black, Aboriginal, or other, one allocates a high degree of respect to the dominant White majority at the expense of one’s esteem of one’s own racial group.   This individual desires to “be as White as possible” and renounce his own racial heritage and norms.  (Pewewardy describes it another way:  If you have seen these racial antics and negative behaviours … for most of your life, you may become absolutely numb to it.)

DYSCONSCIOUS AUDISM:

A form of audism that accepts dominant hearing norms and privileges.  It is the attitude of a Deaf individual that Hearing people are better than Deaf people. ” To hear is better than to be deaf.”  It is the desire to be as Hearing as possible.  I will apply Pewewardy’s explanation here: If you have seen  (audist) antics and negative behaviours for most of your life, you may become absolutely numb to it.)

DYSCONSCIOUS LINGUICISM:

(The definition is similar to dysconscious racism and dysconscious audism.)

A form of linguicism that accepts the dominant language as superior to own minority language.

It is the attitude  that English is superior to ASL (or Spanish, or other… insert language here).

Remember my previous vlog that described my perception of ASL as broken English, and how the ASL-using Deaf weren’t smart and required support because they had low-quality education?  Well, that was an excellent example of dysconscious linguicism,   When we have dysconscious linguicism in the Deaf community, that usually comes hand in hand with dysconscious audism.   You might recall the hard of hearing students in the last vlog who thought they were privileged to go to public schools because they could hear and speak better than the rest of us? Those same students also viewed ASL as broken English!