'Converse racialization' and 'un/marking' language: The making of a bilingual university in a neoliberal world. (June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mena, Mike; García, Ofelia
• Is Part Of: Language in society. Volume 50:Number 3(2021)
• Page Start: 343
• Page End: 364
• Publication Date: 2021-06
• Subjects: Sociolinguistics -- Periodicals; 305
• DOI: 10.1017/S0047404520000330
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0047-4045

Abstract

Abstract: The discourse on the opening of a bilingual university along the Texas-Mexico border leads us to propose a theory of 'converse racialization' through which the local Spanish is being progressively 'unmarked' and disassociated from the language practice of Mexican Americans. Converse racialization, as the equal and opposite co-constituting underside of racialization, shifts the directionality of semiotic indexes away from a particular 'race' or 'ethnicity' (including whiteness) and produces an apparent state of 'unmarkedness'. We argue that the process of 'unmarking' Spanish has social, economic, and racializing consequences. Specifically, the language-as-resource discourse obscures and rearticulates the 'deficiency perspective' that continues to perpetuate structural inequalities that Latinxs in the border face. (Racialization, higher education, critical race theory, bilingualism, neoliberalism)*