Drawing on ethnographic interview data informed by international students in Australia, this study aims to expand the notion of ‘linguistic racism’ through two main traits – ‘ethnic accent bullying’ and ‘linguistic stereotyping.’ ‘Ethnic accent bullying’ refers to bullying in the forms of ‘laughing’ and ‘joking’ towards ethnically and linguistically different background speakers’ biographical English accent. ‘Linguistic stereotyping’ refers to predefined negative perceptions imposed on English speakers based on their race, ethnicity, and nationality. These speakers are often ‘heard,’ ‘seen,’ or ‘imagined’ speaking ‘bad’ or ‘low proficient’ English irrespective of their actual high-level in English. Alarmingly, a majority of international students who participated in this study have experienced these two types of linguistic racism, which further posed serious ‘psychological damages.’ These traits of linguistic racism often instigate inferiority complexes leading to social withdrawal, sense of non-belonging, low self-esteem, fear, and anxiety over speaking English. The accumulation of these inferiority complexes further instigated severe depressive symptoms of mental health such as suicidal ideations. This study, therefore, concludes that an integrated perspective addressing linguistic racism and psychological damages together may be particularly useful in developing interventions against international students who are suffering from mental health problems.

The title seeks to show how people are embedded culturally, socially and linguistically in a certain peripheral geographical location, yet are also able to roam widely in their use and takeup of a variety of linguistic and cultural resources. Drawing on data examples obtained from ethnographic fieldwork trips in Mongolia, a country located geographically, politically and economically on the Asian periphery, this book presents an example of how peripheral contexts should be seen as crucial sites for understanding the current sociolinguistics of globalization. Dovchin brings together several themes of wide contemporary interest, including sociolinguistic diversity in the context of popular culture and media in a globalized world (with a particular focus on popular music), and transnational flows of linguistic and cultural resources, to argue that the role of English and other languages in the local language practices of young musicians in Mongolia should be understood as "linguascapes." This notion of linguascapes adds new levels of analysis to common approaches to sociolinguistics of globalization, offering researchers new complex perspectives of linguistic diversity in the increasingly globalized world.

Papers in this Special Issue, “Linguistic Racism”, focus on the phenomenon of linguistic racism – the ideologies and practices that are utilised to conform, normalise and reformulate an unequal and uneven linguistic power between language users (Skutnabb-Kangas 2015 Skutnabb-Kangas, T. 2015. “Linguicism.” In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics , edited by C.Chapelle , 1–6. Malden, MA : Wiley. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] ) – directed at culturally and linguistically different (CaLD) or Indigenous backgrounds around the globe. The authors provide multiple ethnographic studies to understand what it means to speak as a racialised subject in the highly diverse societies of the twenty-first century, examining the manners in which one’s fundamental human rights are violated, and how one is deprived of both socio-economic and socio-cultural opportunities as a result of their use of language. All of the articles acknowledge the multiple, complex layers of cause and effect that further entrenches linguistic racism into particular social, cultural, ethnic, national and educational contexts that (re)shape the minoritised bilingual speakers’ linguistic practices. The Special Issue addresses the effects of critical approaches to current bilingualism theories that break new ground by disclosing the reality that it is not always applicable to commend bilingual diversity without fully acknowledging ongoing, often profoundly entrenched, local constraints.

This paper seeks to expand the translingual tradition through a stronger focus on ‘the political implications’ – a way to understand the ordinariness of everyday resistance. When people engage in linguistic resistance in everyday life, it might have mixed motivations; it might not be theoretically informed; it might draw from their cultures of resistance in their community history; it might need ideological analysis by scholars so that we can create more awareness among ordinary people. Drawing on the social media translingual practices of young people in different geographical contexts such as Mongolia and Japan, we consider the transgressive implications and the politics implicit in these young people’s everyday language choices. We seek to interpret these politics in a situated manner, in relation to the local and geopolitical contexts that impinge on these practices and language choices.