Tackling linguistic discrimination in higher-education

Socio- and applied linguists have long been committed to critically exploring the interrelation of language and social (in)justice. However, most of this research has considered these issues as 'real world' problems, addressing linguistic inequality in contexts such as the courtroom, professional interviews, and the school classroom.

In this talk, Christian Ilbury will argue that these issues are closer to home: universities are complicit in the maintenance, circulation, and promotion of linguistic inequality.

He contends, as educators, we not only have a duty to resolve these issues in our own classrooms, but – as professional linguists – we have the tools, knowledge, and approaches to be able to address these issues across institutions.

The event will also include contributions from current University of Birmingham students on their experience of accentism.

Christian Ilbury is Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics and Director for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion for the School of PPLS at the University of Edinburgh. He is a member of Accent Bias in Britain – a project which examines current attitudes to accents in Britain, and investigates whether unconscious accent bias plays a role in how job candidates are evaluated – and is an advisor to CIRCE: Counteracting accent discrimination practices in Education. Together with Erez Levon and Devyani Sharma, he co-authored the 2022 Sutton Trust report, ‘Speaking Up: Accents and Social Mobility’.

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