On November 24, 2020, The Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies hosted Professor Walt Wolfram of North Carolina State University, who spoke on the topic of linguistic discrimination. Wolfram discussed the ways in which discrimination is still very common against speakers of nonstandard dialects of English, whether the dialects are associated with regions, social-classes, races, or ethnicities. A telling quote from the presentation comes from author Rosina Lippi-Green: “Discrimination based on language variation is so commonly accepted, so widely perceived as appropriate, that it must be seen as the last back door to discrimination. And the door stands wide open.” (Lippi- Green 2012:73). Wolfram also discussed the ways in which higher education can perpetuate this kind of discrimination, and he provided suggestions for how we can avoid doing this.
The talk was attended by ELWS faculty, our College in the Schools instructors, and English teachers from the greater Duluth area. For more on Professor Wolfram’s work, please see his web page.