The Oxford Handbook of Language and Prejudice

This volume offers an indepth examination of linguistic prejudice, covering its intersection with racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and various other forms of oppression. It includes perspectives from the Global South and explores initiatives to address prejudice on the basis of language.

This volume explores and rearticulates the relationship between language and prejudice. Language plays an important role in the conceptualization, enactment, and defence of prejudice at both the individual and institutional level. Language (and language users) can also be the object of prejudice, and language itself can - with some conditions - be thought of as a solution to prejudice. The chapters in the volume examine how prejudice manifests itself, how it is perceived, and how it might be combatted. Parts I - III cover linguistic prejudices relating to gender and sexuality, ableism, and race and ethnicity, while Parts IV - VI explore social issues, politics and religion, and educational perspectives. The final part looks at projects and initiatives to tackle linguistic prejudice in a range of contexts. While recent work in the field has tended to inadvertently construct knowledge according to normative and Northern epistemologies, this volume features contributions that also provide an understanding of linguistic prejudice from Global South perspectives.