On March 1st, Donald Trump signed an executive order “Designating English as the Official Language of The United States.”[1] This is a symbolic gesture, for sure, to fuel the nationalist discourse that helped Trump reach the White House again. A confirmation, also, of the hostile history of the country toward multilingualism. A recent post on Lingoblog explained that American settlers’ annexation of native peoples’ land resulted in the loss of 90% of the languages once spoken in the territory.[2] The fate of immigrant languages has not been much better. Assimilation to English by the third generation has been the norm in the country. It is not by chance that the US has been known as the graveyard of languages. Civil movements and political pressure from grass-root organizations, however, have achieved significant rights for diverse linguistic communities. From support for bilingual education to access to an interpreter in the justice system. Trump’s executive order threatens some of these rights. Besides symbolically making English the official language of the US, the legal document revokes a previous executive order that required federal agencies to implement measures to improve access to their programs and activities for people with limited English proficiency.[3]
Language and inequality
Trump’s executive order is a recent, prominent and powerful example of how language is a terrain where social inequality is constantly produced and reproduced. The way languages are used and valued in our societies, the ideas about language that people hold, and the language policies that governments put forward affect people’s lives. They either grant or deny access to fundamental rights. They drive social inclusion or, conversely, legitimize the marginalization of vulnerable populations. Lingoblog’s readers are already familiar with this. As previous posts have noted, gender identities and uneven gender roles in patriarchal societies are played in and through language,[4] past colonial projects and current neocolonial cultural and economic relations are forged in a shared language,[5] and the field of linguistics, rooted in European colonial history, has long neglected its contribution to the naturalization of uneven power relations.[6]
We witness language inequalities every day. People are attacked or mocked because of the way they speak. Accents are used to classify people as uneducated or even potentially problematic or dangerous. Minority communities are unable to access basic services because they are not offered in a language they can understand. People’s linguistic practices (an index of their racial, gender and class positionality) are often used to motivation exclusion from a job, education or housing selection process. Indeed, sociolinguistic research has long shown that systemic discrimination rooted in language is as pervasive as other forms of discrimination based on race, sexuality or gender. However, contrary to what happens with these elements, language is not problematized as a social construct involved in the reproduction of inequality. Language distinction is not seen as resulting from historical contingencies, but taken for granted as the natural outcome of human difference. In short, while language plays a fundamental role in social injustice, mainstream ideas about language prevent many people from seeing language in this manner.
ReDes_Ling: A project to understand and resist linguistic inequality
To contribute to call attention to these kinds of issues and to close the gap between scientific research and non-academic and widespread social takes on language, we have started a collaborative project called “Resisting Language Inequality/Resistir la Desigualdad Lingüística.” ReDes_Ling brings together five academic and five non-academic institutions from Europe and Latin America which embody different epistemologies and disciplines and encompass diverse social, demographic and multilingual contexts.[7] Funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Staff Exchanges 2022 call (ref. 101131469), the goal of our project is to share our experiences and knowledge on the different ways in which language reflects and constructs inequality in our societies, as well as on the strategies we put in place in our communities to reverse the negative effects of such forms of inequality.
During 2024, the first year of our action, we composed a collaborative report that emphasizes the idea that behind linguistic inequalities lie other forms of inequality that must be unmasked. Structural inequalities related to the construction of nation-states, historical processes of colonization and the stratification of social groups result in discrimination against minorities (such as original peoples) and social hierarchies related to gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, different abilities, and their interconnections. In short, language-based inequality sinks its roots in systemic problems generated by unjust economic, political and social orders (neoliberalism, nativist nationalism, colonialism or patriarchy).
A glossary of language inequality
As part of that report we used a workshop to create a glossary of terms that the participants associate with language inequality and we populated it with audiovisual testimonies of our experiences and actions of resistance. By sharing the glossary in this entry of Lingoblog, we intend to encourage critical reflection on the ways in which language becomes a place of reproduction of injustices, discrimination or legitimization of violence. We hope that such reflection becomes the basis for concrete actions to change the way in which languages are used, thought, and valued, thereby contributing to reduce social differences and move towards a more just world, as Greenlandic speakers did by creating 2SLGTQIA+ terminology to struggle against the heteronormativity imposed through colonization.[8]
Below we propose some ideas to use the glossary, in the hope that all groups to whom this is relevant will make it their own.
- Localize the glossary: the glossary that we composed revolves around 10 central nodes that articulate the cloud (words in orange), associated words that are related to each of these nodes (in dark blue) and connecting words that can link different associated words (in light blue). These terms and associations made sense to us, to our situated experience of language inequality and our forms of resistance but they may not make sense to you. Discuss the concepts and associations. Add words that are important for the communities that you belong to and modify the connections between terms in order to create a version of the glossary that reflects your situated experience.
- Narratives of discrimination and linguistic privilege: listen to the testimonies embedded in the glossary by clicking on the terms marked with a red dot. Discuss your own experiences of disadvantage, judgment and ignorance based in the way you (and we) speak, sign or write and, conversely, moments in which your (and our) linguistic repertoire(s) have opened doors or have been a source of praise. What are the main commonalities and differences between your experiences and ours?
- Add testimonies to the glossary: record audios or short videos with reflections or definitions similar to those found in the glossary, so as to not only complete the conceptual cloud, but also enrich it with new experiences in different languages and varieties. If you want us to upload and share your testimonies in our glossary, email us!
- Create other materials: use the glossary as a basis for creating other materials (explanatory video clips, multimedia collages, podcasts, etc.).[9]
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/designating-english-as-the-official-language-of-the-united-states/.
[2] Bakker, P. (10/02/2025). “Is the Greenlandic language extinct?,” https://www.lingoblog.dk/en/is-the-greenlandic-language-extinct/.
[3] https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/eo13166.pdf.
[4] Moeslund Ahlgren, L. (24/11/2020). “Deborah Cameron on the impact of feminist linguistic research,” https://www.lingoblog.dk/en/deborah-cameron-on-the-impact-of-feminist-linguistic-research/.
[5] Ruiz, L. (23/04/2023). “Hispanofonía y panhispanismo. Unidad en la diversidad en el contexto de la globalización,” https://www.lingoblog.dk/es/hispanofonia-y-panhispanismo-unidad-en-la-diversidad-en-el-contexto-de-la-globalizacion/.
[6] Moeslund Ahlgren, L. (28/07/2020). “On some colonial structures in the field fo linguistics, ” https://www.lingoblog.dk/en/on-some-colonial-power-structures-in-the-field-of-linguistics/.
[7] The organizations that make up ReDes_Ling are Centro de Estudios del Lenguaje en Sociedad, Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina), Centro de Estudios Superiores de México y Centroamérica, Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas (México), Centro de Investigación en Multilingüismo Discurso y Sociedad, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Consejo Nativo de la Mujer Indígena de Chaco (Argentina), Cooperativa Multiactiva Agropecuaria de Pasca (Colombia), Instituto Caro y Cuervo (Colombia), Københavns Universitet (Denmark), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain), Radio ARA (Luxembourg), Wichi Lhomet Colectivo Editorial (Argentina).
[8] Olsen, Q. (28/06/2024). “Expanding Greenlandic language to support 2SLGTQIA+ terminology and challenging the colonial heteronormativity,” https://www.lingoblog.dk/en/?s=heteronormativity.
[9] This entry has been written as part of the Resisting Language Inequality project (MSCA-SE, ref. 101131469). Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Laura Villa (laura.villa@uam.es) received her Ph.D. from The Graduate Center (CUNY) in 2010. She is currently a Tomás y Valiente Research Fellow at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her research interests revolve around the intersection of language and politics. She is co-editor of Anuario de Glotopolítica and coordinator of the ReDes_Ling project.
Marta Kirilova is an Associate Professor of Multilingualism in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. Her research examines migration, globalization and language use, with a particular focus on linguistic inclusion and exclusion in multilingual workplaces. She has investigated language and minoritization in various contexts such as job interviews, career advancement for international university employees and interpreter-mediated meetings.
Martha Sif Karrebæk is professor of multilingualism and Danish as a second language at Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. She has used a linguistic ethnographic perspective to interrogate language use and language ideologies in a variety of contexts – preschool, kindergarten, mother tongue education, restaurants, courts, hospitals. She is particularly interested in the tensions between and effects of different participants’ understandings as they unfold in interaction.
Call for applications: take part in the 14th edition of Liet International, the competition for songs in minority languages in Bastia, Corsica! 
Basque and gender: how a genderless language also suffers from gender inequality 
Name signs in Danish Sign Language 
Language attitudes towards Sheng: deterioration or unification? 
The Centre of Voice Studies at Aarhus University 
Portuguese Language Day: Exploring the Global Tapestry of Portuguese Influence