I first learned about Ingrid Piller's book in June 2016 through an email announcement on the linguistic ethnography forum (LING-ETHNOG@JISCMAIL.AC.UK). With the approval of Oxford University Press, Piller made the first two chapters available to LING-ETHNOG subscribers who signed up to participate in an e-seminar. Online response to these two chapters was enthusiastic, generating constructive discussion over issues raised in a book that has forced us to think about linguistic diversity in relation to social justice. As Piller reminds us, diversity is not a neutral phenomenon; rather, it is inextricably linked to economic inequality, cultural domination, and unequal political participation. And it is against a wider backdrop of migration and neoliberalism that this eight-chapter book is set, its timing apt in light of recent calls to consider the metapragmatics of mobility (Lo & Park Reference Lo and Park2017) and revisit the concept of language rights (Wee Reference Wee2010).
The first three chapters introduce the reader to the notions of linguistic dominance and linguistic subordination that frame the book. Chapter 1 underscores how structural inequities undergird linguistic diversity. In the second chapter, Piller asserts that linguistic domination is manifested through the creation of an imagined standardized norm, which results in a denigration of linguistic repertoires that deviate from a standard language. Crucially, a devaluation of language skills often extends to individuals, whose identities are called into question. Using the term CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) in Australia as an example, Piller illustrates how diversity discourses end up being divisive in nature as it marks one group as ‘diverse’ and another as ‘normal’, simply by virtue of their language use.
The processes of subordination constitute the focus of chapter 3. The territorial principle, which is ‘a collective belief that ties a particular abstract language to a particular place and that is enshrined in much linguistic-rights legislation’ (35), comes under scrutiny because it delegitimizes the practices of speakers who lack historical ties to a particular territory. Critiquing the one-nation-one-language ideology of the US, Piller demonstrates how residents of Chinatowns in the US are often depicted as failing in their linguistic and national duty to learn English because these residents elect to use Chinese. Through the creation of social boundaries, the media, Piller adds, is also complicit in determining who constitutes legitimate members of society. In keeping with the social justice theme of the book, we are also alerted to the existence of double standards when it comes to recognizing the linguistic and cultural rights of people. Using Germany as an example, Piller informs us of the inequalities surrounding diversity discourses: while the rights of the 50,000 Danes in Germany are acknowledged, such rights are denied to the three million Turks residing in the country.
The next three chapters (chapters 4–6) examine linguistic diversity in three distinct areas: work, education, and human security and participation. Language proficiency, we are reminded in chapter 4, is an employment barrier because immigrant job candidates are often weeded out during the application process on the basis of their linguistic proficiency. Thus, not only do skilled migrants become deskilled as a result of linguistic gatekeeping, some are also racialized and gendered, thereby indicating the intersectionality of identity categories and how these categories overlap in reinforcing structural inequalities. In addition, linguistic subordination at the workplace can also take the form of suppressing the home languages of migrants by mandating the use of the dominant societal language at the workplace. In short, not only are migrants’ multilingual capital not valued, they are also often exploited because of their limited language proficiency.
Turning to education in chapter 5, Piller focuses on how international migration disadvantages linguistic minority students at school who encounter interrupted education and whose home languages are not recognized in the linguistic market of the school. Such students are excluded from receiving quality education. In a similar vein, linguistic minority students in submersion education settings have to contend with learning both the dominant language and academic content, which ultimately impedes their academic performance. This problem is exacerbated by standardized tests that fail to honor the cultural resources of these students. Not surprisingly, students like Oscar, a grade five African refugee learner cited by Piller, are often misdiagnosed for their language proficiency and end up becoming academic casualties.
Reminiscent of the Chinatown residents discussed in chapter 3, Piller, in chapter 6, resurrects her point about the linguistic injustice experienced by disadvantaged speakers who are portrayed as agents of their own exclusion. Expanding on the linguistic barriers to participation that such speakers have to negotiate, she describes acts of micro-aggression encountered by a swathe of learners that ranges from young women sojourners from China, Japan, and South Korea, to well educated Polish newcomers in London. These micro-aggressions also extend to international students at Australian universities and Hispanic students at US universities who also often have to contend with racism. In short, as observed by Piller, ‘it is social arrangements that exacerbate linguistic disadvantage or, alternatively, enable participation’ (162).
Moving beyond the nation-state that framed the preceding chapters, Piller shifts gears in chapter 7 by illustrating how inequality also stems from inequality between states. Such inequality is often mediated through a global north/global south divide and bears vestiges of colonialism. Coming under harsh attack in this chapter is the myth that a dominant language needs to be established to facilitate socioeconomic development. Much space in this chapter is also devoted to demonstrating how the promotion of global English, woven into the discourse of development, is often to the detriment of local communities and languages. A case in point, Piller notes, is Cambodia. According to her, the prioritization of English language teaching aid over basic literacy education only benefits the Cambodian elite, while the average Cambodian is denied access to literacy development in Cambodian and English. This devaluation of local knowledge, Piller notes, also often results in a reduced appreciation of local knowledge partly because of increasing pressure on non-English-speaking universities to publish in English to raise their world rankings. In sum, the dubious legacy of colonialism has far-reaching psychological effects as it instills an inferiority complex among locals who aspire to achieve parameters of success set by neocolonial powers.
In the eighth and final chapter, Piller emphasizes the need to examine linguistic privilege, given its pivotal role in understanding linguistic domination. One way to offset social inequalities, is to produce counter-discourses of hope. For inspiration, Piller turns to early seventeenth-century Persia to show how such a goal can be achieved. Invoking Shah Abbas, a historical figure from New Jolfa, Isafan, as an example, she highlights how Abbas's resettling of Armenians—key entrepreneurs with a wealth of transnational connections at that time—proved to be strategic move in promoting multilingualism and allowing for the creation of a safe inclusive space. The book ends on an encouraging note as readers are left to ponder over how real linguistic utopias can be realized.
In adopting a case-study approach to this book and building her argument for linguistic diversity and social justice around contemporary (e.g. Oscar in chapter 5) and historical (e.g. Shah Abbas) individual cases from all around the world, Piller effectively communicates her points in a highly accessible way. Significantly, the inclusion of real world instances of linguistic injustice in her book is aligned with her democratic agenda. This agenda is further instantiated by the fact that ‘much of the arguments and analyses in this book were first published as research blog posts on the sociolinguistic portal Language on the Move at www.Languageonthemove.org, which also contain additional images, audio and video on the site’ (8). That some of her materials were crowd sourced through the aforementioned portal and that readers have the option to engage dialogically with Piller through online conversations speak volumes to her genuine attempt to not only write about linguistic diversity and social justice but also put it into actual practice. On a broader note, the book's call to embrace a social justice agenda and engage in greater empathy is timely given an ascendant global anti-immigrant sentiment. Indeed, such movements of people and places across stretches of space and time warrant new theoretical tools for analysis. Neoliberalism, which is discussed extensively in this book, is one tool. However, neoliberalism could have been paired with the notion of sociolinguistic scales (De Costa Reference De Costa2016; Collins Reference Collins2017) in order to offer a granular examination of how individuals negotiate the complexities surrounding linguistic diversity and social justice as they move across time and space. That shortcoming aside, Piller's introduction to applied sociolinguistics is an outstanding addition to the growing body of work on language and people on the move.
