Raciolinguistic perspective on labor in the Americas

Abstract

Abstract This introduction presents the concept of raciolinguistic ideologies and discusses its potential to look at issues related to labor in the Americas. We explore the concept of raciolinguistics as a helpful anchor for researchers to examine the co-construction of race and language. Additionally, we link the current reproduction of social and economic inequality to the interconnection of slavery and capitalism stemming from the colonial projects. We briefly present the six contributions to this special issue, a collection of works that rely on different theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and analytical approaches to examine the (re)production of inequality in American labor markets as it materializes in unfair working practices and discourses that naturalize labor discrimination across the region. The six papers included in the issue offer an interesting dialogue between the raciolinguistic perspective and political economy approaches. Finally, these papers highlight four overarching themes: the repercussions for vulnerabilized communities of the stratification of the labor market, the ways in which the commodification and decommodification of racialized languages tend to favor powerful social positions, the way in which language authority operates to decide what counts as legitimate languages/speakers; and the need felt by speakers to make discursive sense of raciolinguistic practices and discourses.