Panel | Linguistic Justice in our Classrooms: Promoting Equity for Speakers with Diverse Language Backgrounds

This event is part of the 2026 Celebrate Learning Week, taking place from May 4 – 8, 2026.

This session brings together faculty and students from Arts and Education to discuss how we can “cultivate meaningful change” (the CLW theme) by attending to Linguistic Justice in our classrooms. Linguistic Justice responds to linguistic discrimination, taking as its premise that all languages, language varieties, and accents are legitimate and valuable. As The President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence notes, “[w]hile racial discrimination has become less tolerated […] linguistic discrimination as well as the supremacy of English and standardized language are often overlooked or taken lightly.” Thus, one recommendation in that report is to “recognize linguistic difference as intersecting with anti-racism” and more specifically to engage “critical dialogues on raciolinguistic norms and expectations.”

This panel will host one of these dialogues. Panelists will unpack the notion of linguistic (in)justice and how it can (inadvertently) manifest in classrooms. They will then share research findings and classroom strategies from members of our working group that support multilingualism and accent diversity; the conversation will highlight ways that members of the UBC community can foster more equitable classrooms for speakers of all language backgrounds.

This session would particularly benefit instructors looking to understand how attention to linguistic justice can deepen their commitment to an equitable classroom.

This event is multi-access.

 
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