Colonialism and Linguistics

Language and colonialism are entangled in intricate ways, and so is the discipline of linguistics and colonialism. European colonialism resulted in major linguistic shifts and turbulence in the world, from language death to the creation of hybrid ways of speaking. In work on language and colonialism, approaches from decolonial and postcolonial linguistics are providing new analytical lenses on colonialism from a linguistic viewpoint, studying ways of speaking and language ideologies in contact-zones, but also critically evaluating the role of linguistics as a part of the colonial matrix of power, and exploring the alternatives to Eurocentric linguistic tradition of analysis.