Speaking “broken” English: linguistic minorities building cross-cultural alliances in US higher education

Abstract

We draw on our lived experiences as faculty of communication studies from Asia, living and working in the United States, to explore how U.S. higher education constituted our identity as linguistic minorities. We also draw on tenets of collaborative autoethnography, producing insight on three levels of linguistic discrimination against non-standard English accents: institutional quality control of our accents/dialects, disciplinary requirements for publishing in English, and everyday communication with locals. The article highlights the value of collaborative autoethnography as a method of inquiry and reflection in a transnational context, providing a rare account of the ways in which international faculty members’ experience resonates with and transforms local-born Southerners who also face discrimination for their stigmatized dialects. We critique the blind spot that privileges hegemonic English in our scholarly communication and propose listening-oriented communication pedagogy to empower voices from the margins within the academia.

Keywords:

• Diversity
• equity and inclusion (DEI)
• #CommunicationSoWhite
• hegemonic English
• transnational collaborative autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Renu Pariyadath acknowledges the Office of Sponsored Awards and Research Support at University of South Carolina Upstate for partial funding for her work.

Notes on contributors

Hsin-I Sydney Yueh

Hsin-I Sydney Yueh is an associate teaching professor of communication at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. Prior to MU, she was teaching at Northeastern State University, Oklahoma, USA. She specializes in intercultural communication education, ethnography of communication, and language and social interaction.

Renu Pariyadath

Renu Pariyadath is an associate professor of communication at University of South Carolina Upstate, USA. Her research focuses on social- and environmental justice organizing in the Global South, using critical intercultural communication and transnational feminist theory.