Advocating for Sociolinguistic Justice in the United States: Empowering Spanish-Speaking Communities

This collection focuses on social awareness and critical language awareness with the goal of enlightening and empowering multilingual and multicultural communities across the U.S.

Each chapter brings to light the trauma, gaps in services and misguided societal perceptions that adversely impact communities whose linguistic and cultural background and/or status as migrants place them in vulnerable situations. In doing so, the authors and editors demonstrate how an increased awareness of diverse communities’ linguistic and cultural wealth can be leveraged to build strength and resilience in order to overcome physical, verbal or symbolic violence and provide remedies for inequities in educational, medical, and legal contexts.

Showcasing discussions of the intersectionality and contexts in which language, power, migration, and the cultural funds of knowledge of minoritized communities interact, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and educators in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and language education.

Michelle F. Ramos Pellicia (Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is a Professor of Sociolinguistics specializing in Latinx communities at California State University San Marcos.

Patricia MacGregor-Mendoza is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at New Mexico State University, USA.

Mercedes Niño-Murcia is Professor Emerita of Hispanic Linguistics in the Departments of Linguistics and Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Iowa, USA.