Abstract 4A

Sunday, July 9 1:25pm

Navigating microaggressions: Building inclusive spaces with tools grounded in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and speech-language pathology

Janet Cowal cowalj@pdx.ed
Applied Linguistics, Portland State University, Portland, USA

Teresa Roberts robertst@pdx.ed
Speech and Hearing Sciences, Portland State University, Portland, USA

Microaggressions are off-hand comments, questions, or behaviors representing larger societal bias, oppression, and minoritization (Sue et al., 2007). Microaggressions derail students’ academic success,  sense of community, and belonging, negatively affecting senders and receivers (Oleson, 2021; Oluo, 2018). Receivers are marginalized (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012) while senders may be shamed. Microaggressions and fear of committing them create barriers to authentic discussion and learning across learning environments (Cavanagh, 2016). Instructors seeking to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for students need to analyze how microaggressions are created and employ tools to assist students in gaining strategies to both prevent and address microaggressions should they occur.

Because microaggressions are contextualized and nuanced, an analytical framework and protocol for addressing them can be created by combining concepts from pragmatics (e.g., implicature (Grice, 1989), presupposition (Green, 1996)), critical sociolinguistics (Cowal & Leung, 2021; Eades, 2004) and scaffolding, priming, scripts, and sentence frames from language intervention (Ukrainetz, 2015). Instructors can use and teach linguistic tools for non-threatening discussion approaches that validate student identities and experiences, offer strategies to reduce microaggressions, and provide safe space that empowers receivers while allowing senders to make mistakes without shaming.

Informed by ways language functions within society to categorize and marginalize individuals (Bucholtz, 2019), presenters provide attendees with tools to address microaggressions from linguistic and speech-language pathology perspectives. Attendees: (1) learn and practice strategies to help students examine the significance of their words prior to speaking (2) receive scripts for different response methods for microaggressions to scaffold generalization of inclusive speaking patterns. Attendees analyze and co-construct response methods for microaggressions. The presenters’ commitment to DEI comes from personal and professional perspectives as faculty of Color in academia who mentor students of Color in learning and research settings. The tools presented have been successfully used in classes and trainings at Portland State University.

References

Bucholtz, M. (2019). The public life of white affects. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 23(5), 485–504. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12392

Cavanagh, S. R. (2016). The spark of learning: Energizing the college classroom with the science of emotion. West Virginia University Press.

Cowal, J., & Leung, G. (2021). Activist applied linguistics. In S. Conrad, A.J. Hartig, & L. Santelmann (Eds.). The Cambridge introduction to applied linguistics (pp. 308-324). Cambridge University Press.

Eades, D. (2004). Understanding Aboriginal English in the legal system: A critical sociolinguistics approach. Applied Linguistics 25(4): 491-512.

Green, G. (1996). Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding (2nd Ed.). Routledge.

Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Oleson, K. C. (2021). Promoting inclusive classroom dynamics. Stylus Publishing.

Olou, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. Seal Press.

Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2012). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to social justice education. Teachers College Press

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271-286. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.4.271

Ukrainetz, T. (2015). School-age language intervention: Evidence-based practices. Pro-Ed. ISBN978-1-416-40610-5