Linguistic Hegemony in Academia and the Devaluation of Minority Identity in Higher Education

 09/11/2017, ссылка на источник: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1522/linguistic-hegemony-in-academia-and-the-devaluation-of-minority-identity-in-higher-education

A commonly observed trend among American universities is the relative underperformance of minorities in the academic arena. The usual, often lazily regurgitated explanation for this phenomenon revolves around socioeconomic situations that minority groups find themselves in, contributing to their academic plight. While this deserves some credit, this fails to tell the entire story. Apart from the general socioeconomic status of many social groups, minorities often engage in academic communities that do not even remotely mirror their cultural upbringing, values, or habitus. Institutions of higher education in the United States are hardly agencies of unbiased reason and truth; instead, the curriculum and narratives they maintain are hegemonic products of centuries worth of cultural influence. This white, eurocentric influence affects every aspect of university life: the subtle dress codes, biased curriculum, and even the nuanced language and linguistic characteristics. Apart from academic performance, however, this restricted cultural lens that universities embody can suppress minority cultures and repress minority identity. The Eurocentric linguistic hegemony that permeates higher education not only disadvantages minorities in the academic sphere, but quells the cultural value and identity of minority social groups, due to the unorthodox habitus they possess.

With this paper, I initially define cultural hegemony and habitus, supplementing this with a brief overview of how current hegemony status disadvantages minorities, along with practical examples. I then narrow in on the more specific concept of linguistic hegemony, developing an understanding of how cultural narratives are translated through language, and conveying language’s connection to identity and community.

Having conveyed the mechanisms of hegemony, and the importance of language in culture and community, I intend to merge the two to develop a link between educational hegemony and the devaluation of minority identity in higher education. Hopefully this will provide new critical insight into the oppressive effects and mechanisms of hegemony in the form of language, and contribute to the academic conversation surrounding minority identity in America.

Each social group perceives the world through their own unique cultural lens, complete with their own unique social and material characteristics. When a dominant social group in a society attains and maintains hegemony, their subjective cultural lens becomes the objective lens of society, imposing itself through various instruments and institutions, manifesting itself in both tangible (architecture, art, commodities) and intangible (social cues, linguistic patterns, taboo perversions) nuances (Gramsci, 2000). Hegemonic dominance is present in all facets of civilization, from the fashion industry to the commonly used metaphors we utilize that carry preconceived notions regarding gender, identity, and heteronormativity.

Hegemony determines what is proper and improper, correct and incorrect, and acceptable and unacceptable, all while effectively stifling any ideological opposition. The response to hegemony is difficult- either conform or experience marginalization. In a practical sense, imagine providing a service that does not mirror the dominant culture in your community, dressing in a way that does not reflect the unspoken codes, or socializing in a way that fails to comply with perceived normalcy - you will be ostracized and frowned upon, leading to the inevitable repression of your minority culture.

Applying this concept to education is simple: however, it is important to note that education is a medium by which hegemony traverses uniquely. While cultural hegemony usually functions subtly, through mass media or general social reproduction, it does so differently in regards to higher education. Academia represents the most pure vessel for hegemony to disseminate its worldview, as the goal of education is to provide students with a specific lens to understand their surroundings, and feed them the information by which they can effectively navigate their environment- an environment already constructed around this hegemonic influence. Furthermore, academia represents a cyclical method by which hegemony is maintained, and ideology continues to reproduce and justify itself in a base/superstructure relationship (Gramsci, 2000). From this we can assume that educational hegemony functions as one of the major agents in the marginalization of minority communities.

It is worth noting the function of habitus, for the sake of transparency and clarity. Cultural Habitus, a concept of Pierre Bourdieu, refers to the cultural values that each and every person inevitably carries with them. Habitus may manifest itself in material representations such as clothing and/or cultural artifacts, as well as intangible personal characteristics such as linguistic characteristics or general demeanor.

Its inseparability from hegemony is strikingly obvious, and with both these concepts, we can move forward in applying habitus and hegemony towards today’s issues facing marginals and minorities in academic settings.

To quickly demonstrate the more visible effects of cultural hegemony in education in relation to minorities, I’ll briefly discuss a few studies. “Black students obtain college degrees at substantially lower rates than White students (Haycock, Jerald, & Huang, 2001; Hoffman, LIagas, & Snyder, 2003), and many of those students who do earn degrees take longer than the traditional four years,” writes Mervyn J. Wighting in Cultural and Interpersonal Factors Affecting African American Academic Performance in Higher Education: A Review and Synthesis of the Research Literature.

The author addresses very early on, the “White faculty and administrators who have low-academic expectations of Blacks, [and] Eurocentric curricula and pedagogy” that contributes to this low academic performance- An obvious allusion to eminent cultural hegemony. Moving forward- “Not attending to the use of culturally responsive pedagogies can create stress in African American students who enter predominantly White schools... According to Hale-Benson (1986), education must be relative to the student. She maintains that a student must be able to interpret and transform the information presented in order to make the schooling experience educative.[…]

Крымский федеральный университет им. В. И. Вернадского

Институт иностранной филологии

Кафедра иностранных языков № 2

Список разговорных тем по дисциплине «Профессионально ориентированный курс иностранного языка» для обучающихся 29.04.03 Технология полиграфического и упаковочного производства

 42.04.03 Издательское дело

1.  Global demography and languages

2. English for global economy

3.  English as a universal language

4.  Receptive multilingualism

5.  Language and diversity

6. English in European integration 

7.  Cross-cultural communication – the new norm

8.  Culture’s components

9. Communication and culture

10.  How to teach multicultural communication

11. Beyond cultural identity

12. Total quality diversity

Крымский федеральный университет им. В. И. Вернадского

Институт иностранной филологии

Кафедра иностранных языков № 2