Collaborative Research: Linguistic Production, Perception, and Identity in the Career Mobility of Black Faculty in Linguistics and the Language Sciences

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。这项混合方法研究考察了语言科学和相关领域的黑人教师如何在语言上驾驭他们的专业经历。黑人教师能熟练地驾驭各种英语，具有较强的感知语言能力和语言灵活性。同时，语言上的不平等可能会导致黑人教师通过对其语言的持续评估而体验到种族主义的结构性现实。这些发现将有助于深入了解语言歧视如何在学术界黑人学者的系统性代表性不足中发挥作用，以及语言如何在这些过程中发挥作用。该研究还调查了黑人学者在语言科学和相关领域的职业不平等，以提供精确的数据，语言研究人员可以利用这些数据扩大语言学院系和项目的参与。该研究采用基于社区的参与式方法，其中包括来自少数族裔服务机构（MSIs）和以白人为主的机构（pwi）的10名初级和中期职业学者作为研究伙伴。这项研究采用访谈、焦点小组和调查的方式，对另外100名黑人教师进行了调查。该研究提出的主要问题是：语言学和语言科学领域的黑人教师如何以及何时在高等教育中使用黑人语言实践？他们的语言使用如何影响他们的学术参与和职业流动？本研究通过测量结构种族主义和内化种族主义对语言选择的影响来检验和完善语言服从的语言模型。该研究建立在Co-PI之前的工作基础上，通过分析学生如何在学术环境中以不同的方式表达种族身份，同时引导语言期望，研究了黑人本科生的语言选择。本研究将采用类似的方法，逐步扩展理论和经验模型，以解决黑人教师面临的这些动态，为黑人学者的模型添加急需的细微差别，同时测试教育中使用的语言模型对成人专业人员的适用性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This mixed-methodological study examines how Black faculty in the language sciences and related areas linguistically navigate their professional experiences. Black faculty are skilled at navigating between varieties of English, with strong perceptual linguistic abilities and linguistic flexibility. At the same time, linguistic inequalities may cause Black faculty to experience the structural realities of racism through the continuous evaluation of their language. These findings will yield insight into how language discrimination plays a role in the systemic underrepresentation of Black scholars in academia and how language plays a role in those processes. The study also examines professional inequalities for Black scholars in the language sciences and related areas to provide precise data that language researchers can use to broaden participation in linguistics departments and programs. The study uses a community-based participatory approach that includes ten junior and mid-career scholars from Minority Serving (MSIs) and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) as research partners. The study uses interviews, focus groups, and survey to reach additional 100 Black faculty. The main questions that the study asks are: How and when do Black faculty in linguistics and the language sciences use Black language practices in higher education? How has their linguistic use affected their academic participation and career mobility? The study tests and refines the linguistic model of language subordination by measuring the impacts of both structural and internalized racism on language choice. The study builds on the Co-PI’s prior work that examined the linguistic choices of Black undergraduates by analyzing how students variably express racial identity while navigating linguistic expectations in academic settings. This study will take a similar approach, incrementally extending theoretical and empirical models to address these dynamics facing Black faculty, adding much-needed nuance to the model regarding Black scholars while testing the applicability of linguistic models used in education to adult professionals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.