Beyond Linguistic Racism: Linguicism and Intersectionality Among Mongolian Background Postgraduate Female Students in Australia

Abstract

This article investigates the experiences of female postgraduate students of Mongolian background in urban higher education institutions in Australia, focusing on the causes and effects of linguicism from an intersectional perspective. While the existing concept of linguistic racism primarily focuses on language discrimination from the perspective of race and racism, the data examples in this article present how linguicism seeks to go beyond because all systems of prejudices, such as sexism, ableism, ageism, racism and others, are simultaneously operating. The article concludes that an intersectional approach to linguicism not only comprehensively analyses the combined impact of various social prejudices but also promotes more inclusive coalitional advocacy and intervention. It urges urban educators, policymakers and interdisciplinary scholars to collectively reflect on how linguicism may impact the academic experiences of students of colour.

Introduction

The Australian higher education system offers undergraduate, postgraduate and vocational education courses across urban and rural universities, colleges, and institutions. The majority of international students who come to Australia, however, choose their institutions located in large urban settings and cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane. The critical factors for this choice include the reputation of institutions, as metropolitan cities are home to many of Australia's top-ranked universities. These urban institutions also offer diverse courses that are relevant to international students’ needs. Cultural diversity is also important, as urban areas tend to have larger immigrant populations, creating a multicultural environment for international students. Career opportunities also play a role, as cities are major financial hubs with plentiful job and internship opportunities that attract international students (Kerstens & Pojani, 2018).

As a result, Australia's urban higher education institutions have witnessed an increased international flow of students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, with a record-setting high number in 2024, which topped 700,000 for the first time. According to the Australian Department of Home Affairs (2024), there were 713,144 international students in Australia by February 2024. As a result, the urban higher education system in Australia serves international students of various cultural backgrounds in its multiple programs. There is widespread consent among Australian higher education institutions that embracing diversity is one of the key policies to ensure equal opportunity and inclusion (Dobinson & Mercieca, 2020). The important role international students play in Australian society and economy and the significance of sustaining a competitive and resilient international education sector has been at the forefront of discussions in the Australian Universities Accord - a 12-month review of Australia's higher education system led by a Panel (Australian Department of Education, 2024).

Meanwhile, these diversity approaches have also been called “the heroes and holidays approaches” (Kubota & Lin, 2006, p. 485) – the superficial celebration aspects of cultural diversity, in which policies aimed at diversity seem to merely add up to no more than well-worded mission statements, or a part of “corporate re-branding and more talk than walk” (Dobinson & Mercieca, 2020, p. 790). These approaches undermine the critical issues surrounding linguistic diversity in the urban higher education system in Australia (Liddicoat, 2016), with policies remaining largely monolingual national value systems. In fact, international students in higher education programs in Australia are largely silent communities who fly beneath the radar, studying and living at the margins of various discriminations (Dobinson & Mercieca, 2020; Tavares, 2021). They are often silenced by the discomfort of discussing various types of social prejudices, grappling with various prejudices perpetuated by the normative national system of the dominant Anglophone society (Liddicoat, 2016).

This article, therefore, investigates the lived experiences of international postgraduate students, particularly, Mongolian background female students, enrolled in higher education programs in urban settings of Australia, exploring the multiple causes and effects of linguicism (Nguyen & Hajek, 2022; Uekusa, 2019). This type of linguicism is deeply personal because the full range of linguistic discrimination occurs at the intersectionality of other social “-isms” such as racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, classism (and so on) because language is not just a medium of communication but also a marker of one's identity, presence, personal history, and social belonging. Linguicism occurs at an (inter)personal level when a perpetrator's deeply ingrained negative perceptions of language users of other languages - often influenced by factors such as gender, religion, race, ethnicity, or nationality (and so on) - override any acknowledgment of the language user's actual fluent level of that particular language proficiency. Nothing exists in isolation in the formulation of linguicism, but rather, it intersects with other elements of discriminations. The primary research questions, thereby, addressed in this article are as follows:

In what ways, why and how does linguicism operate (inter)personally at the intersectionality of other “-isms” within the higher education context in Australia?

How can understanding of linguicism inform anti-racist practices in urban education system in Australia and globally?

Understanding linguicism from an intersectional lens within urban education system of Australia is essential for advancing equity, as these higher education institutions retain a large number of linguistically and culturally diverse background students. When educators and policymakers overlook and undervalue this diversity, it can result in the linguicism of students whose home languages, accents or dialects differ from the standard language of instruction. Such neglect can significantly impede students’ academic engagement, sense of belonging, and self-esteem. By acknowledging and addressing the implications of linguicism within urban education contexts in Australia and beyond, educators and policymakers would be able to cultivate more inclusive, equitable, and supportive learning environments for all students.

Linguistic Racism

Rubin (1992) and his colleagues conducted an experiment in the 1980s among undergraduate students at a university in Florida. They audio-recorded a science lecture delivered by a native speaker of American English with a standard American English accent. Two different groups of undergraduate students listened to the lecture recording. In the first scenario, the picture of a white woman was presented during the lecture. In the second case, the image of an Asian woman was presented. These scenarios were intended to create an impression that a white woman was reading the lecture in the first scenario and an Asian woman in another. Both women were presented in the same posture and pose. Later, the students who saw the picture of an Asian lecturer rated that they heard a “foreign” and “Asian” accent despite this accent being completely absent in the auditory signal. The students further rated that the foreign accent of an Asian lecturer instigated low comprehension. Overall, the students rated the lecture quality much lower when they assumed the lecture was delivered by an Asian woman.

By viewing the subjects addressed in this experiment through a historical lens, we can see that little has changed over the last three decades regarding the linguistic racism targeted at people of colour. Linguistic racism refers to discrimination against one's language, linguistic repertoires, accents, dialects, vernaculars and so on, primarily from the perspective of race and racism (Dovchin, 2020a, b; De Costa, 2020; Flores & Rosa 2015; May, 2023; Rosa & Flores 2017; Sah, 2019; Wang & Dovchin, 2023). Certain individuals or groups who are associated with certain races become the racialized subjects of linguistic discrimination such as “accentism” (Dovchin & Dryden, 2022; Roessel et al., 2020), “native speakerism” (Jenks & Lee, 2020), and “dialectism” (Watt, 2025). This is a race/-ism-based understanding of linguistic discrimination, making the combination of racial and linguistic factors salient as evidenced in raciolinguistic ideologies (Rosa & Flores, 2017). Linguistic racism, thus, primarily investigates conflicts, inequalities and hierarchies emerging from the linguistic and communication practices of people from different races (Dovchin, 2020a, b).

Central to linguistic racism is a colonial matrix of power in today's apparent post-colonial world, in which the positioning of Westernization as superior to non-Westernization, including the positioning of Western languages spearheaded by English as superior to non-Western languages and the positioning of Western race (White) superior to non-White race (Cioè-Peña, 2022; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017). This colonial legacy of linguistic racism is still ongoing today: e.g., the legacy of British settler-colonial history, along with the privileges this history has provided for White and monolingual English speakers, is still evident in the institutional and interpersonal discourses of the post-colonial Anglophone societies (Cioè-Peña, 2022; Dovchin, 2020a, b, May 2023, Sah, 2019, Wang & Dovchin, 2023).

Here, linguistic racism is particularly unpacked from the intertwined understandings of the pervasive language ideologies such as native speakerism, which provide birthright to White English speakers, idealizing their Standard English varieties (Jenks & Lee, 2020). Non-White English varieties are often pathologized and racialized. “What colour is your English?” – is the subtle question of linguistic racism, primarily directed at people of colour (Creese & Kambere, 2003). This is a “White gaze” (Morrison, 1992), which relies on ideologies imposed by White listening subjects who hear and interpret the linguistic practices of non-White subjects as linguistically deviant based on their racial positioning, and White speaking subjects who engage in the idealized linguistic practices of Whiteness (e.g., native speakers of English, standardized English, White middle-class norms, etc.) (Flores & Rosa, 2015).

The linguists have been warning about the harm of linguistic racism on people of colour, including ethnic minorities, migrants and Indigenous communities, and calling for advocacy and social justice (Baker-Bell, 2020; Piller, 2016; Williams et al., 2022). Still, little has changed regarding the linguistic practices of these marginalized people over the last decade (Baker-Bell, 2020). It is, for example, almost impossible to separate the language and racism separately in the context of Australian Aboriginal communities as various languages that these people use (e.g., Aboriginal English (AE), Standard Australian English, Kriol and, to various degrees, traditional languages) and how they appear physically, particularly their skin colour, confluence how others negatively react to them (Tankosić et al., 2024). New Zealand's settler-colonial legacy can still be directed at te reo Māori - the Indigenous Māori people and their languages, perpetuated specifically by older White New Zealanders, who often stand in defence of English monolingualism and their opposition against New Zealand's ongoing effort of establishing bilingual society - English and te reo Māori (May, 2023).

There have been emerging studies from Australia and Canada in which anti-Asian linguistic racism is apparent, mainly targeted at international students from China, India, Mongolia, and so on (Dovchin, 2020a, b; Kubota et al., 2023; Piller, 2016). These Asian students are expected to speak, write, or communicate in the manners of the colonial languages, such as Standard Australian English in Australia (Dovchin, 2020a, b; Piller, 2016), UK (Sah, 2019) and/or English/French in Canada (Kubota et al., 2023). They are also forced to Anglicize their ethnic names to comfort the ears of the White-listening subjects (Kubota et al., 2023). There seems to be a silent but pervasive structured set of racist attitudes and practices against the language use of Asian students as they either receive rejections through compliments (“Your English is good!”) or inquisitive comments on their English proficiency (“How did you learn English so well?”). Consequently, the highly proficient English skills of Asian students in Anglophone societies like Australia, which are favourably appreciated in their home countries, may often be de-valued in the host society, as their English status goes “from hero to zero” (Dovchin & Dryden, 2022), placing little or no value on their linguistic and literacy skills.

African American people have become another target of linguistic racism as the pervasive ideology of anti-black linguistic racism has been implemented for Black students and their Black Language, as these students endure linguistic violence and dehumanization in various school settings in the United States (Baker-Bell, 2020). Anti-black linguistic racism starts with the common practices of silencing, correcting, and policing Black students by their teachers and educators who have strong beliefs that there is something inherently wrong with their Black Language (see Lee et al.'s paper in this issue). It denies Black students’ right to use their own varieties as a resource and enforces them to learn White Mainstream English.

Overall, the concept of linguistic racism primarily explores linguistic discrimination based on language and race/ism-oriented factors directed at people of colour. It is drawn on the unequal relationship between minority and hegemonic language groups at the level of race, where racialized minority groups are not able to fully utilize their linguistic repertoires within the dominant society. This leads to racial conflicts and racism since minority languages, linguistic practices or repertories are often linked to specific races.

Nevertheless, this account of linguistic racism has started being problematized by certain scholars in recent years for heavily focusing on unequal language power relations at the level of race/ism, and less attention has been given to the intersectional nature of other interrelated axes of social prejudices (Nguyen & Hajek, 2022). Linguistic racism may not be able to fully cover all linguistic discrimination forms that are not necessarily related to race/ism because these forms may also overlap across one's social class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, age, health, disability and geographical so on., factors. As Nguyen and Hajek (2022) note, “Although people of colour in these contexts [referring to linguistic racism] are often negatively affected by racism, their social backgrounds are quite diverse […], which is related to the different types of linguistic discrimination they experience” (p. 195) The underlying assumptions in linguistic racism approaches, thus, need to be expanded through a more critical understanding of intersectionality — as a tool of critical analysis and intervention.

Intersectionality: From Linguistic Racism to Linguicism

The idea of intersectionality was essential to the Combahee River Collective Statement, formed by a group of Black feminist women in Boston in 1977, who stated their political beliefs and political activism aligned with other progressive political, social and ideological movements. They were dedicated to fighting against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppressions, viewing this layer of oppressions as interconnected (Combahee River Collective, 1977/2019). Later, intersectionality was expanded by the works of U.S. critical race theorists to investigate racism through multilayered processes that reflect and/or are impacted by other aspects of social, cultural, political and identity structures (Crenshaw 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2010).

As a primary definition, intersectionality refers to the interconnected oppressions in race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, and other categories of social groups, which could adversely impact the lived experiences of individuals and communities in different social contexts and over time (Gillborn, 2015). This is a complementary perspective from different disciplines—with macro analysis of intersectionality from the social system and microanalysis of individuals—collectively inform us about the unique experiences of people defined by their social categories (Grosfoguel et al., 2018; Lewis et al., 2017; Rosette et al., 2018). As Matsuda (1991) demands that we “ask the other question” with intersectionality, pointing out that all systems of oppression are simultaneously operating, and that we must seek out how, rather than assume they are distinct (p. 1189). As Matsuda (1991, p. 1189) wrote:

The way I try to understand the interconnections of all forms of subordination is through a method I call ‘ask the other question’. When I see something that looks racist, I ask ‘where is the patriarchy in this?’ When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, ‘Where is the heterosexism in this?’ When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, ‘Where are the class interests in this?’ Working in coalition forces us to look for both the obvious and the non-obvious relationships of domination, and, as we have done this, we have come to see that no form of subordination ever stands alone. (p. 1189)

Aligning with Matsuda (1991), Rosette et al. (2018) also noted, while race and gender, for example, can be considered as two distinct social categories, they are “not two independent experiences” (p. 2, emphasis in the original).

Yet, most studies tend to continue to focus on investigating them one at a time, as if members of these social groups are entirely isolated from each other or as if they are disjunctive (Rosette et al., 2018). This disjunctive approach, unfortunately, is not able to adequately capture the differential treatments based on one's gender or race because men and women can often experience racism differently, just as women of different races can experience sexism differently (Hultgren et al., 2024; Lewis et al., 2017; Rosette et al., 2018;). It is, therefore, essential to consider the joint effects of different social oppressions, exposing how an intersectional perspective can influence the oppressed communities (Grosfoguel et al., 2018).

From this perspective, linguists have also started emphasizing the significance of understanding race/ism-based linguistic discriminations through its intersectionality. Nguyen and Hajek (2022), in this regard, suggested the term linguicism to be a useful umbrella concept that can characterize the full range of linguistic discrimination-based intersectionality issues. As they noted, “we believe that the use of the linguicism concept may contribute to placing linguistic discrimination at a position equivalent to that of racism, sexism or classism, and this can, hopefully, attract more attention to the issue from the research community, and in turn, from the public and policymakers” (Nguyen & Hajek, 2022, p. 214). The lens of linguicism, in this regard, with its focus on intersectionality, would enable us not only to recognize various language-based “-isms” (e.g., accentism, dialectism, native speakerism) but also link them to other multilayered axes of social prejudices - “- isms” (e.g., ableism, agism, sexism etc.). Linguicism enables us to understand the fact that certain group memberships can make certain other groups vulnerable to various forms of language-based discrimination, yet because they are simultaneously members of many other social groups, their complex identities can shape the specific way they each experience macro and micro level of prejudices.

Linguicism can be deeply personal and may occur at the intersection of multiple -isms such as ableism, sexism, ageism, and other forms of prejudices because language is not just a medium of communication but also a marker of one's race, appearance, identity, personal history, and social belonging. Linguicism occurs at an (inter)personal level when a perpetrator's deeply ingrained negative perceptions of speakers of other languages—often influenced by factors such as gender, religion, race, ethnicity, or nationality (and so on) - override any acknowledgment of the speaker's actual proficient level of that particular language fluency. Two women with the same race but with different religions may experience linguicism differently, just as men of the same race but with different sexual orientations may experience another different layer of linguicism.

For example, a Somali Muslim woman who grew up in New Zealand speaking English as her first language, faces linguicism in Australia due to wearing her hijab and traditional clothing. Despite her proficiency in English as her first language, her English skill is often questioned and stereotyped because of her traditional outfit, ethnicity, race, and appearance (Dovchin, 2020a, b). While a non-Muslim African who grew up in Australia speaking English as her first language faces linguicism in Australia due to her skin colour, age and gender despite her full proficiency in the language. Two women of same races with the same English ability but with different ethnicities might encounter linguicism differently (Tankosić & Dovchin, 2024).

This hierarchy is evident in Bishop et al.'s (2005) study on accentism – accent-based discrimination - where French-accented English, North American English, Scottish English and German-accented English are often highest-ranked for prestige next to other ethnic-accented English accents (Bishop et al., 2005). When French women, for instance, speak English, they are often celebrated for having “romantic” accents, while the accents of Ukrainian women of the same White race can be pathologized as “the Russian Bride” (Dryden & Dovchin, 2024, p.1473). There are sweeping generalizations – the intersectionality of ethnicism and sexism, to be more specific, in Western society that Eastern European women migrate for morally questionable economic purposes to the West, amorally using their sexuality for economic and citizenship purposes (Hultgren et al., 2024). The intersectionality of ethnicism and sexism against Ukrainian women through their Ukrainian-accented English is a label that is placed on these women, diminishing their identity to a “sexualized and stereotyped caricature of what Eastern European women is perceived to be, according to their accent, nationality, socio-economic status and gender” (Dryden & Dovchin, 2024, p. 1473).

Another intersectional point for linguicism is ableism, an important social category that helps us understand multiple grounds of linguicism when considering how it is intersectionally constructed (Cioè-Peña, 2022). According to Goodley (2018), all of us live with the dis/ability complex: that is, the ability cannot exist without disability. Ability flourishes when new forms of disability are diagnosed. As Goodley (2018) noted, “just as society holds more sway in the promises of self-sufficient, autonomous, and able citizens so those that fail to meet up to the ableist zeitgeist are rendered disabled” (p. 7). Of course, there will be winners and losers here because human values, social groupings, and individual human qualities are consigned on either side of the dis/ability complex (Goodley, 2018). From this perspective, the linguistic ability of people of colour may often fail to meet the expectations of the able citizens – the White native speakers of English, in this case.

In fact, studies show that the mental ability of the racialized subjects is often questioned due to the proficiency of their English. They are often viewed as less intelligent and slower, and they are considered to have deficiencies and communication problems because of their ‘deviant’ English (Clément & Gardner, 2001). The linguistic proficiency, capacity and competence of the racialized subjects are, thus, often placed at the side of the ‘disability’ by the White listening subjects. Here, the intersectionality of ableism and linguicism is also drawn on Crip Linguistics (Henner & Robinson, 2023), which seeks to reveal how perceptions of disability or perceptions of embodied deficits could lead to linguistic disorder rhetoric.

Linguicism, in this regard, reveals how able citizens may (il)legitimize one's language performance between normal and defective at the expense of others and often place them on the side of the disability. For example, with a Mongolian child who recently arrived in Australia, his English ability was illegitimized by his teachers at school because of his slow response. As a result, he was suggested to attend “speech therapy”, as his English ability was assumed to be a speech deficiency (Dovchin & Wang, 2024). Canagarajah (2023b) also quoted an example where African American Vernacular English (AAVE) was considered ungrammatical, and the speakers of AAVE were cognitively deficient. The uninflected “be” form in AAVE, for example, caused some psycholinguists to believe that these speakers did not possess the mental capacity for abstract grammatical concepts (Canagarajah, 2023b).

Overall, linguicism is experienced as “and,” not “or”. It is conjunctive and interlocked. While the unique and inimitable characteristics of linguicism can be obvious, its interlocking characteristics with other social prejudices would help us identify the distinct oppressions and prejudices experienced by particular social groups. Linguicism seeks to unlock how the pervasive ideologies that uphold ideas about deficient languages are rooted in the intersectionality of other social -isms in certain ways and how those ideologies are also parallel and overlapping.

Research Methodology

This research is part of a larger study with 150 migrants from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds (e.g., Eastern European, East Asian, Southeast Asian) in Australia, investigating the linguistic experiences they have had so far in Australia. Of these 150 participants, 60 international students of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds from different university campuses across Australia were interviewed. Out of these 60 international students, for this article, I chose the experiences of three female postgraduate students aged between 35 and 42 with Mongolian backgrounds, who are all higher degree research students in Australian universities.

All three Mongolian students arrived in Australia as international students and have been living in Australia for at least one year. In the mid-1990s, Mongolian students began travelling to Australia after Mongolia transitioned from a satellite of the Soviet Union to a democratic nation in 1990. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and the political and economic liberalization in 1990, the new Mongolian government adopted an open-door policy, embracing diverse languages and cultures. Russian, which was previously popular in socialist Mongolia, has been replaced by English and other foreign languages. Since the mid-1990s, Mongolia's interaction with Australia has grown, leading to strong people-to-people connections between the two countries. Since 1993, more than 600 Australian scholarships have been awarded to Mongolian students to study in Australia, resulting in a large alumni network (Dovchin, 2017; Dovchin & Oliver, 2021).

As the researcher shared a similar ethnolinguistic background with these three women (Mongolian), it also meant that the researcher and the participants understood the local cultural values and spoke the same language, Mongolian, thus enabling a deeper understanding of the issues. Being an insider further set up opportunities for the constant and extended company between the researcher and the participants through an informal type of follow-up conversation. Another reason for choosing these three women is due to the clarity and specificity of their responses in relation to linguicism in a broad range of higher education contexts in Australia (Dovchin & Oliver, 2021; Dovchin & Shinjee, 2022).

Participants were informed that they would be asked questions about their lived experiences with the use and practices of their English as learners and relevant linguistic racism throughout their social lives, including their academic experiences in Australia. In all, 20 questions were asked about their English usage and its relation to linguistic racism (see Appendix 1), which lasted 60–80 min. Each interview was conducted based on a set of semi-structured questions, which means that all participants were asked the same questions, but depending on each participant's response, additional follow-up questions were solicited when deemed necessary. Some research participants were re-invited to comment on the interview transcripts and conclusive emergent themes to reflect the facts being investigated. Most interviews were audio-recorded, conducted in Mongolian, and translated into English by the researcher.

In order to ensure the reliability of the data outcomes, rich and thick verbatim descriptions of participants’ accounts were triangulated from raw data, coding, transcription, and analysis phases to support findings. To ensure the accuracy of the analysis, the researcher used two different methods (deductive codes/inductive codes) for the final verification of the findings. The analysis tracked both deductive codes in tandem with research questions and inductive codes in relation to participants’ reflections. After double assessment and cross-examination of the data through deductive/inductive codes, the corpus data were thematically analysed into sets of main emerging themes, which were then categorised for their content similarities and differences. After the completion of data coding, data extracts were analysed from the perspective of what research participants told us in relation to linguicism and its intersectionality. The data analysis illustrated that all three Mongolian students have reported their experience with linguicism at the intersectionality of other -isms, especially -isms such as sexism, ethnicism, ageism, racism and ableism.

The study was conducted with regulations for ethical research approved by the Human Research Ethics Office at Curtin University. All participants received a participant information sheet providing the details of the research aims, objectives, ethical concerns, the researcher's contact information, the consent forms, and the project flyers in a physical or digital form. Involvement in the research was voluntary, allowing participants to withdraw at any stage of the study. All informants and their participating universities have been given pseudonyms to ensure anonymity, and their identities have been suppressed to ensure they are not straightforwardly identified. In the next section, I will present the findings of this study, mainly addressing the first research question.

Findings

Linguicism: Intersectionality of Native Speakerism, Ableism and Sexism

In this section, linguicism will be discussed from the intersectionality of native speakerism, ableism and sexism, drawing on the data example of Hulan - a 42-year-old female Mongolian higher degree research student at an Australian university. Hulan described in her interview,

When I started my PhD, I desperately wanted to do a research assistant job because I saw many PhD students were doing the same job. However, my English was questioned for the job because I was not a native English speaker. They wanted a native English speaker who could do the copy-editing or literature review job quickly. I mean, I completed my MA degree in the USA, and I have an IELTS score of 8.5! They still preferred to recruit a native English speaker. So, I really felt I was discriminated because English was not my native language. Honestly, I felt dumb, useless and stupid. (Interview, Perth, Western Australia, December 10, 2023)

Native speakerism generally sustains the idea that the so-called “native speakers of English” have a birthright to English and are valued to have the highest level of proficiency in English both inside and outside the English-speaking West (Choi, 2016).

While relying on notions such as linguistic purity, linguistic authenticity and language standardization (Lowe & Pinner, 2016), native speakerism propagates White superiority, which underestimates other minority languages and idealizes Standard English. It further marginalizes other forms of English deviations and subordinates the linguistic and communicative practices produced by English learners and users with non-Anglo backgrounds (Lippi-Green, 2011). This ideology is further expanded by Jenks and Lee (2020) through the perspective of “native speaker saviorism,” which refers to the longstanding belief that the White communities have a birthright to English and only the kind of English they use or speak can “save” the lives of peoples of colour to survive or fully enjoy the social, cultural, linguistic and financial status of Whiteness (p. 186).

From this view, Hulan, as an Asian student, whose English is considered “non-native,” has been questioned by her employers, placing her at a clear precarity for working as a research assistant at her university (Dovchin, 2024). Clearly, Hulan perceives her English as fully proficient because she passed a high score on the IELTS exam (8.5/9) and successfully completed her MA degree in the USA. Yet, the employers at the university continued to prioritise “native English speakers”: that is, Anglo background native English-speaking peers were treated as the “saviours” of these academic jobs. In this sense, from the raciolinguistic view, these employers operate as a particular form of the “White listening subjects” (Rosa & Flores, 2017, p. 627) by judging Hulan not on what she actually does with her English but, instead, how her English is heard or imagined.

Native speakerism is, further, entangled with ableism, in which Hulan is questioned about her overall ability to perform her job because of the “dis/ability complex” (Goodley, 2018) perpetuated by her employers. Hulan feels that her linguistic ability in English has placed her overall meaning-making ability at the side of the disability. In some ways, Hulan also places herself in the disability complex in which she reifies her language ability in her marking of deficiency and lack of language proficiency through wordings such as “dumb,” “useless” and “stupid.”

The intersectionality of native speakerism and ableism is further entangled with sexism when Hulan reveals her pending motherhood to the employers:

Then, I revealed to them I was pregnant. Then, they asked me if I could realistically see myself coming back to my PhD after having a baby. They also warned me that I was not going to have the energy and time for the research assistant (RA) job because the job involves various rigorous tasks. So, I was never given any RA job because of my English ability and my pregnancy. (Interview, Perth, Western Australia, December 10, 2023)

Sexism is a prejudice toward one's sex or gender, which can affect anyone (Murphy et al., 2011). However, sexism primarily affects women and may include the widespread belief that the male gender and masculinity are intrinsically superior to females and female qualities (Murphy et al., 2011).

In Hulan's case, sexism is associated with proscriptive attitudes surrounding her pregnancy. She felt vulnerable to differential treatment and questioning of her dis/ability to perform the tasks due to her pregnancy since many pregnancy-associated questions and warning statements were directed at her. Though Hulan had not received any physical restrictions from her doctor, her education providers placed Hulan at the side of disability to perform various academic tasks. This is a type of sexism and ableism that allegedly presents a protective attitude toward pregnant women under the hidden name of preserving the welfare of pregnant women. However, sexism is also at play, whether intended or not, in that it is potentially derogatory, in which certain restrictions on pregnant women could limit their social, physical and emotional spheres, and, thus, disempowering their overall mental and physical ability (Murphy et al., 2011).

In a slightly different case, another female student with a Mongolian background, Tuya's academic opportunities were restricted due to her motherhood. As Tuya, age 31, explained,

All my Australian peers are given opportunities straight away, such as co-presenting or co-writing articles and so on. So, the first thing that comes to my mind is, of course, I'm not a native English speaker. I don't deserve this. I would be slow in producing [papers and presentations]. However, I have two children at home, and of course, it is challenging to navigate these opportunities while raising my kids. I always feel this silent discrimination when other childless, single women or men are given more opportunities than me. I always feel so sensitive when my supervisor tells me, “You would be busy with your kids, right?” I don't think he deliberately tries to intimate me. But I feel very sensitive about this. (Interview, Perth, Western Australia, February 21, 2024)

Tuya explains that she is often shunned from academic opportunities, be it co-presenting at conferences, co-authoring papers, or being allocated more work hours as a research assistant due to two simple facts: being a non-native speaker of English and being a mother of three children at home.

When Tuya's education providers were informed about her commitment to motherhood, their perceptions of her academic ability and study commitments were anticipated to drop even further. Tuya feels that childless, male or single native English-speaking peers are placed at the top of the ability ladder, while her ability as a woman of colour with two children place her at the bottom of the ladder. This kind of sexism entangled with ableism and native speakerism that mothers of colour face in the workplace – “maternal wall” (Cheung et al., 2022, p. 1181) – blocks these women's success and prosperity. Prior studies on motherhood show that many employers vilify mothers, claiming that they are more dependable than other childless workers (Cheung et al., 2022). Similarly, for Tuya, it could be the case where the educational providers do not practically see these mothers coming back to rigorous academic work tasks with full energy when they are symbolically contrasted to other idealized academically excellent students – hard-working, unattached and native-English speaking students, in this case.

Indeed, if Tuya was an Anglo background White student who possessed native birthright to English, questions regarding her English proficiency would never have been raised. Moreover, according to Tuya, if she were single, male, and childless, questions about her dis/ability to perform her academic tasks would have hardly been raised. Instead, opportunities were denied to Tuya because of her linguistic and gender positionings in Australian society. Overall, in both cases of Hulan and Tuya, being considered as the speakers of English with no birthright to English has been intensified by sexist and ableist attitudes, which all are interlocked with one another.

Linguicism: Intersectionality of Tone-ism, Racism, Ageism and Sexism

In this section, linguicism will be discussed from the intersectionality of tone-ism, racism, ageism and sexism, drawing on the data example of Saruul - a 35-year-old Mongolian female higher degree research student at an Australian university. In her home country, Saruul has always been in charge of leadership roles at her university, as she used to serve as the Vice President of the Student Council for many years. However, when Saruul moved to Australia and applied for a similar position, she was rejected.

Saruul felt that her English was not up to standard for carrying out a leadership role. As Saruul explained,

I have always been a leader in my home country. I have been involved in many leadership roles at my university in Mongolia. When I came to Australia, I started attending a lot of student-oriented activities, and I applied for a position to lead a Student Council Position. However, I was not chosen because I felt this sentiment that my English was not good. They didnt say directly my English was bad. But they said passing comments like “You need to speak more loudly when you speak publicly,” “You have to work on your public speech,” or “You have to work on your clear and confident expression.” (Interview, Perth, Western Australia, February 19, 2024)

Here, according to Saruul, there is something unidentifiable in her speech when it is performed in English, and is somehow deficient to take up on a leadership role.

We know “accentism” (Dovchin & Dryden, 2022; Roessel et al., 2020) refers to the ways that different non-standard accents, specifically produced by the minority groups, create different power hierarchies, discriminations and prejudices among social groups. In Saruul's experience, it does not seem to be directly the case of accentism, as she was not explicitly told it was her accent. There is also a term “dialectism,” which is used as a cover term for discrimination emerging from negative attitudes towards a particular dialect or towards dialect variations (Watt, 2025). The reference to dialectism also seems to be absent from Saruul's account.

What is, however, present is the -ism, which is largely aimed at her tone of speech – “tone-ism”, where one's vocal sound could be prejudiced with reference to its pitch, quality, and strength (Setter, 2019). It is not what she said but rather how she said it (Setter, 2019). Put differently, Saruul's White listening subjects seemed to be displaying a type of ‘tone-ism,’ in which they hear undesirable tones when she speaks English, which could also be associated with the “non-nativeness” of Saruul's English. What we definitely know, however, is the fact that Saruul was not presumed to be a leader persona, and her speech tone in English definitely played a role here.

Meanwhile, we also need to consider the intersectionality of racism and sexism as Saruul received some feedback that suggested that they were looking for a leader who was more “assertive” and “confident” – the common style expected of typical leaders (Rosette et al., 2018). As Saruul described,

I have also been told that they were looking for someone who is confident and assertive. I think because I’m an Asian woman, they believe I’m not assertive or confident. Later, they hired a White Australian woman, who was very loud. (Interview, Perth, Western Australia, February 19, 2024)

This account is consistent with prior research on the stereotyped speech pattern of Asian women, in which Asian women often fail to attain leadership roles due to wide assumptions that they are more submissive and passive in their communication styles than White women (Rosette et al., 2018).

The speech patterns of Asian women aspiring to be leaders were judged as less self-expressive and less confident than those of White women (Rosette et al., 2018). This type of anti-Asian racist and sexist views – submissive female Asian speech patterns - resulted in assessments of Asian women as less promotable, less optimistic and less desirable for leadership positions than White women (Rosette et al., 2018). This perception of Asian women as being passive and docile continues to affect negative perceptions of their ability to obtain leadership roles.

Lastly, there has also been an element of ageism – a discrimination aimed at one's age (Macdonald & Levy, 2016). Saruul was notified that their priority was to recruit undergraduate students as they needed to renew their institution with the “freshcomers” because it was a youth-centred organization. Not necessarily, a mature PhD student like Saruul. As Saruul noted,

They were looking for first- or second-year undergraduate students who were much younger than me, and I felt very old at the time even though I was only 31. (Interview, Perth, Western Australia, February 19, 2024)

This exclusion was also consistent with previous studies in which ageism exists at alarming levels in workplaces. When two people apply for an identical job, the older applicant will gain fewer invitations for interviews regardless of their experience (Macdonald & Levy, 2016).

The studies further suggested that older female applicants encounter greater age discrimination than male applicants. Older applicants gain poorer access to vacancies than younger applicants, irrespective of organizational values of equal opportunities (Drydakis et al., 2017). Generally, this example reveals that understanding linguicism at the intersectionality of tone-ism, racism, sexism and ageism enables us to fully capture the various aspects of social prejudices that Asian students may experience in Western institutions.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Drawing on lived experiences of postgraduate students, particularly of Mongolian female background, enrolled in urban higher education programs in Australia, this article problematizes the existing concept – linguistic racism - for primarily focusing on unequal language power relations (Tupas, 2019) at the level of race and racism. Although people of colour are often negatively affected by linguistic racism, their social, cultural, gender, age and so on, backgrounds are also very diverse. This means that the concept of linguistic racism may not be able to fully cover all linguistic discrimination forms that are not necessarily related to race/racism. The underlying assumptions in linguistic racism, thus, were expanded by the alternative term – linguicism - a notion which seeks to understand the full range of linguistic discrimination at the intersectionality of other social prejudices such as racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and classism.

Data examples show that nothing exists in isolation in the understanding of linguicism, because the joint effects of different social prejudices have largely influenced the independent lived and (inter)personal experiences of these Mongolian female students. It was clear that these students experienced various forms of linguicism (inter)personally, such as native speakerism, accentism, and tone-ism, which were deeply rooted in sexism (pregnancy and motherhood discrimination), ableism (mental ability and language proficiency), ageism (being a mature-aged student), ethnicism and racism (being of Asian descent). Consequently, many academic and professional opportunities were denied to these Mongolian students (Tankosić & Dovchin, 2024).

However, linguicism does not diminish the seriousness of linguistic racism; rather, it highlights the importance of analyzing its manifestations in various contexts. Its focus on personal and interpersonal aspects of discrimination, which does not preclude an analysis of the structural nature of oppression; instead, it complements it by illustrating how (inter)personal experiences reflect and reinforce systemic issues. It is critical to recognise that linguicism works as a larger category that includes numerous forms of social discriminations, serving as a starting point for capturing the complex interplay between and across various forms of social prejudices. By emphasizing the intersectionality of different -isms, this understanding of linguicism invites readers to reflect on how the system of institutional oppression may also intersect in (inter)personal contexts, promoting a more nuanced and holistic understandings of discrimination.

It is also vital to identify that intersectionality should be addressed from (inter)personal layers: that is, starting with a profounder engagement with the aspects of how linguicism operates at various (inter)personal levels. By framing the discussion in this way, linguicism opens an opportunity for future academic dialogues that can understand the intricacies of the theories of language and discrimination.

Finally, this article urges that future research directions in linguicism should consider intersectionality's earliest roots as a movement of a core activist component to inform antiracist higher education in Australia and other Western societies (Cushing, 2023). As Broad (2017) reminds us, “intersectional activism needs to be re-centered in intersectional studies and that research about social movement intersectionality offers one means of doing so” (p. 41). Linguicism, thus, should not only go beyond analyzing linguistic problems but also shape more effective interventions and promote more inclusive interdisciplinary coalitional advocacy. Linguists, in this regard, need to seek ways to identify with other scholars from gender, race, disability and queer studies to define what linguicism means for the students of colour (Dovchin & Canagarajah, 2019). Otherwise, others will define it for them and use it against them.

Addressing linguicism through intersectionality in urban education is vital for promoting equity. Urban educational institutions often comprise students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. When educators and policymakers fail to recognize and value this linguistic and cultural diversity, it may lead to the linguicism of students whose home languages or dialects differ from the standard language of instruction. This can hinder the students’ academic engagement, sense of belonging and self-esteem.

Understanding linguicism, therefore, should mean more than a mere scholarly effort to expand the existing literature or the empirical examples. It means that we as educators need to pay more attention to the morals of these important empirical examples that have taught us about the reality of the lived experiences of marginalized groups. Obviously, doing more research is important. However, we, as researchers, calling for more activist engagement aimed at building an antiracist urban education movement is equally essential.

In our effort to re-center our research work towards social activism, we should translate our research into practice through how we may influence what we teach, how we teach it, and how we understand our students to resist interrelated social prejudices (Canagarajah, 2023a). This also means foregrounding the direct voices of individually marginalized students and reigniting an exchange between students, activists, policymakers, practitioners, and academics through their shared voices. As researchers, we can do so much more, and one of the starting points is to work towards “constructing critical collective consciousness” (Broad, 2017, p. 41) aimed at building antiracist urban education system in Australia and globally. By understanding and addressing the implications of linguicism within urban education contexts, educators and policymakers can create more inclusive, equitable, and supportive learning environments for all students.