Everyday Examples of Language and Power || Dr. Dillon Mahoney

In this clip, Dr. Mahoney discusses language and power in everyday life, such as through stereotypes.
Transcript:
how is your own use of power reproducing or resisting structures um and and we're all doing this it's sort of false to pretend that that we're not right and it's it's about learning and being aware of of how our language especially the language that we that we use let's say in front of a big audience might have impacts that we're not even aware of right and that's and that's i think really important to just think about um these types of stereotypes a lot of people would say linguistic and you know language ideologies okay they're just stereotypes okay great let's call language ideology stereotypes um how are we reproducing or resisting stereotypes around language we need to be careful about that because language is heavily heavily stereotyped um and then the last one is one that i think a lot about how are we potentially using privilege and actually reproducing our privilege by using language that only we can use and this is something jane hill talks about a lot of people who do mock language right don't realize that okay it's funny but you're doing something that not everybody can do you're only doing that because it's your privilege to be able to do that and so that's something to think about okay now i just wanted to leave this and i don't know i couldn't not mention this um because i think we have mostly faculty and students watching but you see this all the time in the classroom right this is a daily thing happening in the classroom and you don't have to be a teacher to be aware of this you can be a student who sees this happen right you can be a really good ally to a friend in the classroom who you may be aware right that something just happened but it's like you know huh right think about how language is doing a lot right language is doing a lot at once um i wanted to mention you see this in the classroom all the time around gender i've spoken to so many students who are women who say that they wish they went to an all-women's school so that men wouldn't speak over them in the classroom this is one of the oldest things i've heard all the time you know as faculty i think people are often aware of this but i think as students it's also important to be aware of these things that we're bringing in right these are cultural power issues that we should be resisting right we shouldn't be continuing and it doesn't mean you know gaslighting somebody it means just saying hey let's let's figure out how the words you know that we that we use the way that we speak the pauses that we leave i always have trouble with my pauses right slow down let other people speak you know be aware of the fact that not everybody has the same privilege or feels empowered to use language as everyone else okay um i also wanted to mention this in the classroom because there's a lot of language in the classroom that's not spoken um and classrooms are one of the greatest places to look at all the unspoken language that's taking place that shows that again language is not so much mouth stuff but brain stuff because we understand right of course uh faculty understand what student body language looks at looks like okay but also there's dress there's how you dress there's how you cut your hair for those of you who have the privilege of being able to cut your hair um right you're making a lot of choices that that have impacts that have ripple effects right with how society changes um i could uh you know go through additional examples of these how they intersect with race how they intersect with sexuality how they intersect with ethnicity um and you know i want to bring this back to intersectionality because in linguistic anthropology we have we have the tools for this right how to understand for example what we would call uh direct and indirect indexicality not to confuse anybody but in other words how the words that you use are having lots of direct and indirect impacts um on on a lot of the structures in society specifically power structures okay so really quickly to wind this up i want to get back to our main theme of the year um our main theme i'm gonna go with our chair and say our main theme this year is actually making good trouble this is how we can actually use language i think so on the one hand while some of this i guess you could say is like a warning um and it's like saying that you know language can be something that can reproduce power right it can reproduce privilege we have to be very careful of it at the same time i think you know language is what's really going to be useful for all of us in terms of remapping and rewriting history and in a sense making sure that certain communities are represented well um and that we are resisting power structures let's say as opposed to reproducing them okay

[@ronaldgmaster5782]

I thought this was going to be an academic lecture but instead it’s a woke word salad. Oh, how universities have fallen.