1st Edition
Linguistic Diversity and Discrimination Autoethnographies from Women in Academia
This collection explores the ways in which women in academia from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds mediate the negotiation of linguistic discrimination and linguistic diversity in higher education, using autoethnography to make visible their lived experiences.
The volume shows how women in academia from CaLD backgrounds, particularly those living or working in the Global South, draw on their multivalent complex linguistic backgrounds and cultural repertoires to cope with, and manage, linguistic and systemic gender discrimination. In adopting authoethnography as its key methodology, the book encourages these academics to ‘write themselves’ beyond the conventions from which women in academia have traditionally been forced to speak and write. The collection features perspectives from women across geographic contexts, sub-fields and levels of experience whose stories are not often told, putting at the fore their narratives, lived experiences and career trajectories in mediating issues around power, ideology, language policy, social justice, teaching and learning, and identity construction. In so doing, the book challenges the wider field to expand the borders of discussions on linguistic discrimination and higher education institutions to critically engage with these issues.
This book will be of interest to scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and cultural studies.
Introduction: Linguistic discrimination and diversity from an autoethnographic perspective
Sender Dovchin, Qian Gong, Toni Dobinson and Maggie McAlinden
1. Speaking across difference: Autoethnography as a living practice of resistance and truth-telling
Marilyn Metta
Part 1: Autoethnographies: East Asia
2. Folk theories of hierarchies of things and spaces in between
Zhu Hua
3. As rare as unicorns
Saba Ghezili and Angel M.Y. Lin
4. The unbearable weight of the accent
Yue Zhao and Qian Gong
5. The academic transitions of Mongolian postgraduate students in Australia
Bolormaa Shinjee,Chuluuntumur Damdin, Hana Tserenkhand Byambadash, Nandin-Erdene Bayart and Stephanie Dryden
6. More than below, but not quite above: Alterity, exclusion and silence at ‘home’
Uma Jogulu and Maggie McAlinden
7. Feminist reflection on academic life trajectories: The constant ‘becoming’
Shalia Sultana, Preeti Singh and Ulemj Dovchin
8. Autoethnographic narratives from two South Asian researchers in global health
Jaya A.R. Dantas and Zakia Jeemi
Part 3: Autoethnographies: South America
9. South to North: Diversity as an academic asset
Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Lucía Fraiese
10. Gender, racial and social discrimination in academic studies in Brazil: A personal testimony
Gladis Massini-Cagliari
Part 4: Autoethnographies: Africa
11. Negotiating and (re)constructing identities as translingual female Mauritian academics
Mylene Biquette, Nirvana Lavictoire and Toni Dobinson
12. Negotiating identity and language: A reflexive account of Ghanaian and Iraqi migrant academic women in the Global North
Davida Aba Mensima Asante-Nimako, Shaymaa Ali, Ana Tankosić
Part 5: Autoethnographies: Eastern Europe
13. From self- doubt to resilience: Lived experiences of four Ukrainian female academics coming to Australia
Tetiana Bogachenko, Iryna Khodos, Nadezhda Chubko and Larysa Chybis
14. Sliding cultures: Unrecognised cultural and linguistic diversity in academia
Sonja Kuzich, Toni Dobinson
Afterword: Negotiating linguistic discrimination and diversity from an autoethnographic perspective
Sender Dovchin, Qian Gong, Toni Dobinson and Maggie McAlinden
Biography
Sender Dovchin is Associate Professor and Director of Research at the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia.
Qian Gong is Senior Lecturer at the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia.
Toni Dobinson is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Post Graduate Programs in Applied Linguistics at Curtin University, Australia.
Maggie McAlinden is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Coordinator of the postgraduate TESOL program in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University, Australia.
