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Relanguaging: From semiotic marginalization to decolonization

What does it mean to “re-language”?  I offer this term as a proposal for extending H. Samy Alim’s concept of ‘languaging’ to define a process for redressing ongoing, often covert, acts of semiotic marginalization (stereotyping, racism, pernicious exclusion) and to offer a path for remediating those negative acts. To exemplify re-languaging as a process, I reanalyze my work on language documentation, revitalization, and popular media.  I argue that re-languaging happens through the non-conforming voices, perspectives and linguistic forms that are often the “noise” in a dataset.  Furthermore, I posit that re-languaging encompasses “decolonization” while also addressing the contradictions entailed in a process of decolonization in settler-colonial contexts.  In tandem with reflexive research and collaboration, re-languaging confronts the marginalizing effects of a dominant, settler-colonial gaze.

Barbra A. Meek is a citizen of the Comanche Nation, professor of anthropology and linguistics, and associate dean for the social sciences at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She received her PhD in Anthropology and Linguistics from the University of Arizona (2001). Her research spans child language socialization, Athabaskan sociolinguistics, language revitalization, and the ethno-racializing semiotics of Hollywood media.