Linguistics, as a discipline fundamentally based on the human experience of language, continues to struggle with representing the full diversity of those experiences among its scholars, students, and members of the public, especially along lines of race. From the introduction through the conclusion, however, the contributing authors of Inclusion in Linguistics, edited by Anne Charity Hudley (she/her), Christine Mallinson (she/her), and Mary Bucholtz (she/her/they/them), explicitly and implicitly highlight that linguistics has everything to do with race. The book's central mantra—there is no linguistic justice without racial justice—situates racial equity as a prerequisite for a truly inclusive linguistics. Laying bare the structural, ideological, and disciplinary barriers that restrict who gets to participate in linguistics and under what circumstances, the authors share their experiences with in/exclusion in the field and provide action steps to not only reimagine an inclusive discipline, but to realize one. Across the chapters, the authors, who are themselves diverse across racial and gender identities, socioeconomic backgrounds, first in their families to attend college, deaf and disabled, multilingual, and from countries all over the world, offer a comprehensive overview of the many ways scholars just like them are excluded from the discipline. Bringing perspectives across these aspects of identity and more, the authors harken back to the book's central mantra “no linguistic justice without racial justice” through an intersectional framework that illuminates the ways racial justice is intricately woven with justice across gender identities, class, ability, language, nationality, and more. In turn, the book's central mantra extends far beyond any single axis of marginalization. Reading this volume as a cisgender Black American woman whose professional and personal mission has everything to do with racial justice, the book's central mantra resonated with me from its first mention in the introduction and throughout each of the chapters—even ones not directly focused on race. I not only agree that racial justice is necessary for linguistic justice, but that the reverse is equally true: there will be no racial justice without linguistic justice. Nor will there be social justice, more broadly, without linguistic justice. My work and research examine language and race, specifically Blackness, within the US criminal legal system. Persistent racial injustices here are a well-known fact, tracing all the way back to the “abolition” of slavery in the South. Yet, a close reading of the 13th Amendment demonstrates that slavery was never abolished; it was relocated, making involuntary servitude legal for those labeled “felons,” and then disproportionately applying that label to Black people. Regardless of whether one considers this system a “new” Jim Crow or simply the continuation of the old one, the result is the same: racial injustices are enacted through legal and carceral processes—processes that always centrally involve language. In my expert witness work, I have repeatedly seen linguistic injustices become a driver of racial injustice in the system. Non-linguists and non-speakers of African American Language (AAL) who hold institutional power effectively control the meanings of AAL terms in court, setting troubling precedents that legally define African American Language words and phrases. Their misuse and misinterpretations of these terms are then used to incriminate and incarcerate Black people, especially young Black men, the very population most studied by American linguists. Linguists have documented AAL extensively, yet speakers of AAL who are entangled with the system have virtually no access to linguistic knowledge that could help their cases. This became abundantly clear to me during a recent interview between one of my students and a Black man in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where I was conducting a study on pretrial language practices in court. The project aimed to demonstrate how subjective pretrial interviewing practices contribute to racially unjust pretrial recommendations (e.g., disproportionately recommending that judges detain Black defendants), outcomes, and downstream legal impacts. When the interviewee, a Black man who was recently arrested in the county, asked what the study was about, the student explained our study and its emphasis on language. He responded, “All the problems in the legal system, and that's what y'all are focusing on?” His disbelief reflected a real and pressing point: without exposure to linguistics, people navigating the system often cannot see how deeply language shapes their legal experiences. As linguists, we know why language matters, but we have not made this information widely known to everyone else. Are we not then partially responsible for the misuse of language in court, the racial injustices that arise from that misuse, and thus standing in the way of our own goals of linguistic justice? Thinking about these questions, I saw the chapters in Inclusion in Linguistics as not only bringing to readers’ attention ways to bring excluded members of our communities into spaces where linguistic knowledge is shared and made but also implicitly and explicitly demonstrating that inclusion cannot be achieved solely by opening the door wider while there are still circumstances and structures in place that prevent people from coming in. We also connect this framework to our guiding principles surrounding how we conceptualize inclusion. Often when people discuss inclusion, they focus on the integration of marginalized groups into an institution without structurally changing it: That is, they aim for superficial changes that do not alter how the institution operates. The most extreme example of this problem is the tendency for discussions of inclusion to assume that all members of marginalized groups can physically integrate into the institution as a material structure with material practices. This is self-evidently not the case for disabled people, who are expected to navigate physical spaces and activities that were not designed for them. In other words, inclusion that does not encompass physical access for disabled people is not inclusion at all. I bring in this full quote here to highlight that, like disabled people who are excluded from physical spaces where linguistic knowledge is made and shared, this is also the case for people behind bars, who are intentionally segregated from communities, locked away, and often considered unworthy of basic human rights. Reiterating the deeply intertwined constructs of “Blackness” and “criminality,” linguists’ pursuit of racial justice—as a prerequisite for linguistic justice—is also deeply intertwined with so-called “criminal justice.” While, from start to finish, the authors in Inclusion in Linguistics clearly demonstrate how exclusion harms our discipline and provide paths forward toward inclusion, what resonated most with me were strategies that could directly benefit the aims of racial justice for those living behind bars, specifically strategies aimed at increasing broad exposure to linguistics for Black scholars as well as those who may later enter legal professions. As Florian Schwarz (he/him) makes clear in his chapter, “Increasing Inclusion Through Structured Active Learning,” making introductory linguistics courses more welcoming and inclusive is an important step toward inclusivity in the field overall. This is especially true for Black students, for whom Introduction to Linguistics (“Intro”) may be their first point of entry into the discipline. An introductory course that fosters belonging, invites critical reflection, and affirms students' linguistic identities is better positioned to incorporate Black scholarship more permanently and meaningfully. Even if students do not continue in linguistics, attracting Black students to an introductory course has the potential to advance racial justice—our baseline for achieving linguistic justice—by opening pathways for mutual knowledge-building into and out of Black communities by and for scholars from those communities. Overall, the volume's chapters on Intro prompted me to reflect on my own pathway into linguistics, which also began in Intro. Much like Candice Y. Thornton's (they/them) experiences mentioned in their chapter, “For the Culture: Pathways in Linguistics for Black and HBCU Scholars,” my trajectory was profoundly shaped by positive early experiences with mentors and other Black linguists. Taking an Intro course that was non-traditional, inclusive, and affirming of my own linguistic background gave me the confidence to pursue linguistics as a major—something I had never planned to do when I entered college. My path into the field, like those described by Thornton, underscores how crucial those early encounters are for helping Black students see themselves in linguistics. Yet the promise of inclusion should not hinge on Intro alone. One of the reasons Intro is more accessible to non-linguistics majors is that it has no prerequisites. Expanding the number of courses that similarly do not require specialized or technical background knowledge can broaden opportunities for students to engage with linguistics while also reshaping how academics—and the public—perceive the discipline. In my own teaching across literature and criminology departments, I have seen this firsthand: my “Language and Justice” course regularly attracts prelaw students and those pursuing graduate education in related fields. Likewise, the “Language and Law” course offered at Cornell, where I completed my undergraduate studies, consistently draws large numbers of prelaw students. When viewed through the lens of my current work in the criminal legal system, this exposure to linguistic justice becomes even more consequential. For future legal practitioners, understanding how racial justice and linguistic justice intersect within policing, interviewing, plea bargaining, trials, and sentencing provides crucial insight into how language structures their everyday professional environments. Taken together, these examples illustrate why Introduction to Linguistics—and other intentionally designed entry-level courses—can diversify the field while simultaneously advancing the broader goals of linguistic justice. When such courses reach students who may one day work in institutions that shape the lives of linguistically marginalized communities, they do more than simply introduce linguistic concepts; they contribute to structural change. They prepare future lawyers, judges, social workers, journalists, and policymakers to recognize how language and race operate together within systems of power. In this way, reimagining the gateway into linguistics is not only a disciplinary concern but also a concrete step toward linguistic and racial justice. Thus, the book's proposed models and strategies for inclusion—rethinking entry-level linguistics courses (Thornton; Schwarz), cripping linguistics (Henner), and building a big tent linguistics (Dockum and Green)—take on heightened significance through the lens of the criminal legal system. Inclusion, the authors make clear, is not simply a matter of invitation, but a structural redesign. It requires rethinking how linguists produce linguistic knowledge and share it so that the knowledge can tangibly advance racial justice. While this reflection focused primarily on a few specific aspects of the book, taken together, Inclusion in Linguistics is a profoundly necessary text for anyone concerned with the future of the discipline as a whole. Its central mantra—that there is no linguistic justice without racial justice—is both a fact and a call for action. As a researcher whose work centers on justice in the US criminal legal system, I see this mantra reflected in my own work: language shapes social outcomes, access to linguistic knowledge can be a form of empowerment, and exclusion from linguistic spaces perpetuates injustice. By highlighting pathways for inclusion, emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration, and providing concrete strategies for teaching, mentorship, and community engagement, the volume equips linguists to act. Most importantly, it reminds us that linguistic justice is inseparable from racial and social justice, and that our work as scholars, teachers, and advocates must reflect this reality in theory and in practice.
Dominique Branson (Thu,) studied this question.