The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race

Over the past two decades, the fields of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics have complicated traditional understandings of the relationship between language and identity. But while research traditions that explore the linguistic complexities of gender and sexuality have long been established, the study of race as a linguistic issue has only emerged recently. The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race positions issues of race as central to language-based scholarship.

In twenty-one chapters divided into four sections-Foundations and Formations; Coloniality and Migration; Embodiment and Intersectionality; and Racism and Representations-authors at the forefront of this rapidly expanding field present state-of-the-art research and establish future directions of research. Covering a range of sites from around the world, the handbook offers theoretical, reflexive takes on language and race, the larger histories and systems that influence these concepts, the bodies that enact and experience them, and the expressions and outcomes that emerge as a result.

As the study of language and race continues to take on a growing importance across anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies, education, linguistics, literature, psychology, ethnic studies, sociology, and the academy as a whole, this volume represents a timely, much-needed effort to focus these fields on both the central role that language plays in racialization and on the enduring relevance of race and racism.

H. Samy Alim is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Founding Director of the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Language (2010). He is co-editor of Raciolinguistics (OUP 2016), co-author of Articulate While Black (OUP 2012), and author of Roc the Mic Right (2006) and You Know My Steez (2004).

Angela Reyes is Professor in the Department of English at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), and Doctoral Faculty in the Program in Anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is author of Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian (2007), co-editor of Beyond Yellow English (OUP 2009), and co-author of Discourse Analysis beyond the Speech Event (2015).

Paul V. Kroskrity is Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a past President of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology (2013-15) and the editor of Regimes of Language (2000) and Telling Stories in the Face of Danger (2012), co-editor of Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (OUP 1998), and author of Language, History, and Identity (1993).

1. Introduction: The Field of Language and Race: A Linguistic Anthropological Approach to Race, Racism, and Racialization
H. Samy Alim, Angela Reyes, and Paul V. Kroskrity

Part One: Foundations and Formations
2. Language, Race, and Reflexivity: A View from Linguistic Anthropology
Adrienne Lo and Elaine Chun
3. Racism, Colorism, and Language within Their Macro Contexts
Arthur K. Spears
4. Theorizing Linguistic Racisms from a Language Ideological Perspective
Paul V. Kroskrity
5. Reimagining Race and Language: From Raciolinguistic Ideologies to a Raciolinguistic Perspective
Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores
6. Racializing, Ethnicizing, and Diversity Discourses: The Forms May Change But the Pragmatics Stay Remarkably the Same
Bonnie Urciuoli

Part Two: Coloniality and Migration
7. The Linguistic Intimacy of Five Continents: Racializing Language in Empire
Bonnie McElhinny and Monica Heller
8. African-Languages, Race, and Colonialism: The Case of Brazil and Angola
Cristine Gorski Severo and Sinfree B. Makoni
9. Immigration, Language, and Racial Becoming
Awad Ibrahim
10. Coloniality of Mixed Race and Mixed Language
Angela Reyes
11. Racializing Performances in Colonial Time-Spaces
Kristina Wirtz

Part Three: Embodiment and Intersectionality
12. Race, Language, and the Body: Towards a Theory of Racial Semiotics
Krystal Smalls
13. "We Don't Play": Black Women's Linguistic Agency Across Race, Class, and Gender
Marcyliena Morgan
14. Language, Race, and the (Trans)Formation of Cisheteropatriarchy
H. Samy Alim, Jooyoung Lee, Lauren Mason Carris, and Quentin E. Williams
15. "You Met My Ambassador": Language and Self-monitoring at the Intersection of Race and Sexuality
Brianna Cornelius and Rusty Barrett
16. The Gendered Muslim Subject: At the Intersection of Race, Religion, and Gender
Mariam Durrani

Part Four: Racisms and Representations
17. Racing Indian Language, Languaging an Indian Race: Linguistic Racisms and Representations of Indigeneity
Barbra A. Meek
18. Raciolinguistic Exceptionalism: How Racialized "Compliments" Reproduce White Supremacy
H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman
19. Race, Humor, and Politics: Racialized Joke-Telling and Anti-Immigrant Politics in Northern Italy
Sabina Perrino
20. What Does a Terrorist Sound Like?: Language and Racialised Representations of Muslims
Kamran Khan
21. Racializing Discourses of Illegality: Mexican and Central American Migration in the Time of Trump
Hilary Parsons Dick