The Oxford Handbook of Language and Prejudice
Published on 25. September 2025
Book
Hardback
960 pages
978-0-19-286920-3 (ISBN)
Description
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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 252 mm
Width: 180 mm
Thickness: 62 mm
Weight
1833 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-286920-3 (9780192869203)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jane Setter is Professor of Phonetics at the University of Reading. Probably best known as co-editor of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2011), she is also the author of the public-facing Your Voice Speaks Volumes: It's Not What You Say But How You Say It (OUP, 2019) and of Hong Kong English (co-authored with Brian Hok-Shing Chan and Cathy S. P. Wong; Edinburgh University Press, 2010), among others. Her research publications are mainly in speech prosody, investigating pronunciation and phonology in Global Englishes and in children with speech and language differences. She is a National Teaching Fellow of UK Advance HE and an advocate of public engagement with research.
Sender Dovchin is Professor and Senior Principal Research Fellow at the School of Education, Curtin University. She was identified as 'Top Researcher in the field of Language and Linguistics' under Humanities, Arts, and Literature in The Australian's 2021 Research Magazine, and in the top 250 researchers in Australia in 2021. Her recent research focuses on empowering vulnerable youth in Australia by combatting linguistic racism, providing a pedagogical view to accommodate the multiple co-existences of linguistic diversity in a globalized world. Her books include Language, Social Media, and Ideologies (Springer, 2020) and Translingual Discrimination (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Vijay A. Ramjattan is a teaching-stream assistant professor in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, where he also received his PhD in Adult Education and Community Development (with a specialization in Workplace Learning and Social Change). His scholarship relates to the intersections of language, race, and work and can be found in journals such as the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Industrial Relations, Teaching in Higher Education, and TESOL Quarterly. He is also very active on Twitter/X, which he uses to express his research interests in concise form.
Sender Dovchin is Professor and Senior Principal Research Fellow at the School of Education, Curtin University. She was identified as 'Top Researcher in the field of Language and Linguistics' under Humanities, Arts, and Literature in The Australian's 2021 Research Magazine, and in the top 250 researchers in Australia in 2021. Her recent research focuses on empowering vulnerable youth in Australia by combatting linguistic racism, providing a pedagogical view to accommodate the multiple co-existences of linguistic diversity in a globalized world. Her books include Language, Social Media, and Ideologies (Springer, 2020) and Translingual Discrimination (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Vijay A. Ramjattan is a teaching-stream assistant professor in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, where he also received his PhD in Adult Education and Community Development (with a specialization in Workplace Learning and Social Change). His scholarship relates to the intersections of language, race, and work and can be found in journals such as the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Industrial Relations, Teaching in Higher Education, and TESOL Quarterly. He is also very active on Twitter/X, which he uses to express his research interests in concise form.
Editor
Professor of PhoneticsProfessor of Phonetics, University of Reading
Professor and Senior Principal Research FellowProfessor and Senior Principal Research Fellow, Curtin University
Teaching-Stream Assistant Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in EducationTeaching-Stream Assistant Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
Content
Jane Setter, Sender Dovchin, and Vijay A. Ramjattan: Introduction: Rearticulating Prejudice in Relation to Language
Part I. Gender and Sexuality
1: Ting-Fai Yu: Sexism and Sexist Language
2: Jaspal Naveel Singh: Gender and Gendered Language
3: Jordan J. Tudisco: Anti-Trans, Anti-Gender, and Transphobic Language
4: Helen Sauntson: Anti-LGB Language
5: Joe Pearce, Jane Setter, and Amalia Arvaniti: Voice Quality, Pitch, and Gender Discrimination
Part II: Ableism
6: George Akanlig-Pare and Mary Edward: Cultural Stigmatization and Linguistic Prejudice in Deaf Education in Ghana
7: Zarana Maheshwari: Language and Discursive Production of Blind Subjects: A Study of Gujarati Small Stories
8: Valeria Aydos, Luiz Henrique Magnani, and Gustavo Henrique Rueckert: Linguistic Prejudice and Discrimination against Autistic People
9: Christina Samuelsson, Nicole Mueller, and Lars-Christer Hyden: Prejudice and Discrimination against Adults Living with Acquired Cognitive-Communication
10: Rod Hermeston: The Role of Metaphor and Indexicality in the Reinforcement of Social Meanings of Disability
Part III: Race and Ethnicity
11: Eldin Milak and Ana Tankosic: 'Racial Blindness' and 'Racial Ignorance' in the Sociolinguistic Arena: The Case of the Balkans and South Korea
12: Federico Faloppa: Xenophobia and Migration
13: Haley De Korne, Judith Purkarthofer, and Maria Obojska: Heritage Languages
14: Yaron Matras: Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO): A Conflict of Paradigms and its Resolution through New Protocols
15: Laura Smith-Khan: Incredible Language and Refugee Legal Processes: Challenging Asylum Credibility Assessments
Part IV: Social Issues
16: Stephanie Dryden, Min Wang, and Sender Dovchin: Accentism
17: Dominic Watt: Dialectism
18: Catherine MacDonald, Christina Peoples, Jenny Inker, and Tracey Gendron: Age, Ageism, and Ageist Language
19: Patrick J. Dillon, Bianca Siegenthaler, and Ambar Basu: Examining Discrimination and Prejudice as Emerging Constructs in Health Communication Scholarship
20: Laura L. Paterson: Poverty and Wealth
21: Gladis Massini-Cagliari: Social Status and Linguistic Prejudice in Brazil
22: Beatha Set, Phillip Mpofu, and Tendai Chari: Language Prejudice and Discrimination on Social Media Platforms in Southern Africa
V: Politics and Religion
23: Bridget A. Goodman, Yecid Ortega, and Sandro R. Barros: Politics, Religion, and the Empiring of Languages in Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine
24: Juan C. Godenzzi: The Symbolic Power of Written Language in the Andes
25: Dariush Izadi: Understanding Linguistic Prejudice through Linguistic Landscapes
26: Shaila Sultana: Language, Religious Determinism, and Prejudices in Digital Spaces: Historical Antecedents of Colonialism
Part VI: Educational Perspectives
27: Juldyz Smagulova and Karina Narymbetova: The Representation of Minority People in Kazakhstan School Textbooks: The Invisible 130
28: Vander Tavares and Silvia Melo-Pfeifer: Vulnerability to Raciolinguistic Ideologies within the Language Teaching Profession: From Prejudice to Discrimination
29: Carly Steele, Rhonda Oliver, and Natasha Holzberger: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Language Learners in the Australian Education System
30: Yidie Xu and Fan Fang: De-Mystifying Linguistic Prejudice and Discrimination in Standard Language Ideology: Towards Decolonizing Language Education
31: Clara Vaz Bauler and Ian Cushing: Language, (De)colonization, and the Curriculum
Part VII: Combatting Linguistic Prejudice
32: Beth Malory: Language Guidelines as the Frontier of Anti-Prejudicial Prescriptivism
33: Ruanni Tupas: Combatting Inequalities of Multilingualism Online
34: Rob Drummond and Sadie Ryan: Tackling Linguistic Prejudice through Public Dialogue: The Accentism Project and Accentricity Podcast
35: Vijay A. Ramjattan: Twitter as an Online Counterpedagogy to Linguistic Prejudice
36: Josep Soler and Sergi Morales-Galvez: Linguistic Prejudice in Academia: The Case of English for Publication Purposes from an Interdisciplinary Angle
Part I. Gender and Sexuality
1: Ting-Fai Yu: Sexism and Sexist Language
2: Jaspal Naveel Singh: Gender and Gendered Language
3: Jordan J. Tudisco: Anti-Trans, Anti-Gender, and Transphobic Language
4: Helen Sauntson: Anti-LGB Language
5: Joe Pearce, Jane Setter, and Amalia Arvaniti: Voice Quality, Pitch, and Gender Discrimination
Part II: Ableism
6: George Akanlig-Pare and Mary Edward: Cultural Stigmatization and Linguistic Prejudice in Deaf Education in Ghana
7: Zarana Maheshwari: Language and Discursive Production of Blind Subjects: A Study of Gujarati Small Stories
8: Valeria Aydos, Luiz Henrique Magnani, and Gustavo Henrique Rueckert: Linguistic Prejudice and Discrimination against Autistic People
9: Christina Samuelsson, Nicole Mueller, and Lars-Christer Hyden: Prejudice and Discrimination against Adults Living with Acquired Cognitive-Communication
10: Rod Hermeston: The Role of Metaphor and Indexicality in the Reinforcement of Social Meanings of Disability
Part III: Race and Ethnicity
11: Eldin Milak and Ana Tankosic: 'Racial Blindness' and 'Racial Ignorance' in the Sociolinguistic Arena: The Case of the Balkans and South Korea
12: Federico Faloppa: Xenophobia and Migration
13: Haley De Korne, Judith Purkarthofer, and Maria Obojska: Heritage Languages
14: Yaron Matras: Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO): A Conflict of Paradigms and its Resolution through New Protocols
15: Laura Smith-Khan: Incredible Language and Refugee Legal Processes: Challenging Asylum Credibility Assessments
Part IV: Social Issues
16: Stephanie Dryden, Min Wang, and Sender Dovchin: Accentism
17: Dominic Watt: Dialectism
18: Catherine MacDonald, Christina Peoples, Jenny Inker, and Tracey Gendron: Age, Ageism, and Ageist Language
19: Patrick J. Dillon, Bianca Siegenthaler, and Ambar Basu: Examining Discrimination and Prejudice as Emerging Constructs in Health Communication Scholarship
20: Laura L. Paterson: Poverty and Wealth
21: Gladis Massini-Cagliari: Social Status and Linguistic Prejudice in Brazil
22: Beatha Set, Phillip Mpofu, and Tendai Chari: Language Prejudice and Discrimination on Social Media Platforms in Southern Africa
V: Politics and Religion
23: Bridget A. Goodman, Yecid Ortega, and Sandro R. Barros: Politics, Religion, and the Empiring of Languages in Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine
24: Juan C. Godenzzi: The Symbolic Power of Written Language in the Andes
25: Dariush Izadi: Understanding Linguistic Prejudice through Linguistic Landscapes
26: Shaila Sultana: Language, Religious Determinism, and Prejudices in Digital Spaces: Historical Antecedents of Colonialism
Part VI: Educational Perspectives
27: Juldyz Smagulova and Karina Narymbetova: The Representation of Minority People in Kazakhstan School Textbooks: The Invisible 130
28: Vander Tavares and Silvia Melo-Pfeifer: Vulnerability to Raciolinguistic Ideologies within the Language Teaching Profession: From Prejudice to Discrimination
29: Carly Steele, Rhonda Oliver, and Natasha Holzberger: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Language Learners in the Australian Education System
30: Yidie Xu and Fan Fang: De-Mystifying Linguistic Prejudice and Discrimination in Standard Language Ideology: Towards Decolonizing Language Education
31: Clara Vaz Bauler and Ian Cushing: Language, (De)colonization, and the Curriculum
Part VII: Combatting Linguistic Prejudice
32: Beth Malory: Language Guidelines as the Frontier of Anti-Prejudicial Prescriptivism
33: Ruanni Tupas: Combatting Inequalities of Multilingualism Online
34: Rob Drummond and Sadie Ryan: Tackling Linguistic Prejudice through Public Dialogue: The Accentism Project and Accentricity Podcast
35: Vijay A. Ramjattan: Twitter as an Online Counterpedagogy to Linguistic Prejudice
36: Josep Soler and Sergi Morales-Galvez: Linguistic Prejudice in Academia: The Case of English for Publication Purposes from an Interdisciplinary Angle