Linguistic justice

Linguistic justice is the belief that all language varieties—including Black English, Spanglish, code-meshed writing, and multilingual expression—deserve equal respect and legitimacy in educational, institutional, and civic settings. In First-Year Composition (FYC), this principle is crucial for creating inclusive classrooms where students' home languages and identities are recognized as assets, not deficits. Linguistic justice challenges the supremacy of standardized academic English and supports students in drawing on their full linguistic repertoires to express complex ideas, engage diverse audiences, and succeed across contexts. It also aligns with anti-racist pedagogies and teaching for transfer, allowing students to reflect on language, power, and identity while gaining rhetorical awareness. Scholars such as April Baker-Bell, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and Asao B. Inoue emphasize that incorporating linguistic justice in FYC empowers students, disrupts linguistic hierarchies, and creates more equitable writing classrooms.

References

• Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge. Publisher link

• Inoue, A. B. (2015). Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. WAC Clearinghouse. Read online

• Young, V. A. (2011). Should Writers Use They Own English? In Perryman-Clark, Staci, Kirkland, David, & Jackson, Austin (Eds.), Other People's English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy (pp. 61–72). Teachers College Press. Available PDF excerpt

• Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149–171. DOI link

• García, O., Johnson, S. I., & Seltzer, K. (2017). The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Caslon. Publisher page