Language shaming at the crossroads of race and state borders

Location of Inner Mongolia within China (Image credit: TUBS, Wikimedia)

The Humboldt Professorship Team “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan” at Universität Hamburg is pleased to host a guest lecture by Dr Gegentuul Baioud (Uppsala Universitet) about “Language shaming at the crossroads of race and state borders.”

Time: Thursday, October 29, 12 noon-2pm
Venue: Universität Hamburg, Alsterterrasse 1, Rm. 541
Abstract: This lecture focuses on language shaming practices across the Sino-Mongolian border. By attending to the Mongolian state-orchestrated language standardization, discursive legacies and geopolitical configurations that precede and condition language shaming, it unravels the processes through which the stigmatized category of “Inner Mongols’ language” takes shape. The dataset comprises language-shaming episodes on social media and interviews with Inner Mongols (from China) residing in Mongolia. The study argues that the stigmatization of Inner Mongols’ linguistic practices is underpinned by two interrelated processes: the territorialization of Mongolian language and identity within the borders of the Mongolian state, and the socialist legacy of racialized representations of Inner Mongols as “half-breed” or “hybrid” Mongols. The study contributes to our understanding of how language intersects with ideologies of race, nation, and borders among Mongolian speakers.