Title: Language privilege: What it is and why it matters | linguistic pulse
Headings: Language privilege: What it is and why it matters
Language privilege: What it is and why it matters
A quick overview of privilege
What then is language privilege?
Language privilege and access to social, political, and educational institutions
Multiplying privilege: English as capital
‘Standard’ English and the avoidance of language prejudice
Where to from here?

Content: Many people have become tired of hearing all of the ways in which we are privileged through our race (if you are White), our sexual orientation (if you are heterosexual), our religion (if you are Christian), our social class (depending on the degree to which you were born into affluence), our gender (if you are male or also if you are cisgender) and so on until it becomes almost unimaginable that we would want to continue engaging with the issue. The word also perhaps angers us because it seems to focus on the ways in which our lives have been comparably easy while failing to note the struggles most of us have undoubtedly faced as well. However, examining ways in which we or others might have unfair advantages (by no effort or fault of ours or theirs) is an important aspect of living in a just world. Although you’ve probably heard quite a bit about privileges based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and social class, you’ve probably had fewer conversations about the nature of privilege based on language. In many ways, language privilege is related to these other things, but as we continue to enter a world of rapid globalization characterized by international migration, we need to consider the role of language and how it advantages some and disadvantages others. A quick overview of privilege
First of all, I need to give you a quick overview of what privilege is. Privilege refers to the ways in which individuals enjoy particular advantages in life due to nothing they have themselves done but rather aspects of who they are or how they have been raised. You can’t really choose privilege (otherwise everyone would choose it, and it would cease to exist). We can view a system of privilege (and its associated marginalization) as essentially the opposite of meritocracy. In a meritocratic explanation of the way the world is, we highlight people’s actions and choices to explain their advantages and disadvantages in the world.