TWB (Talking While Bilingual): Linguistic Profiling of Latinas/os, and Other Linguistic torquemadas

Linguistic profiling, “the auditory equivalent of visual racial profiling” (Baugh 2003, 155), affects a person’s chances of getting a place to live, a job, a degree, a promotion, a teaching credential and health care because “people use false assumptions about language to justify judgments that have more to do with race, national origin, regional affiliation, ethnicity and religion than with human language and communication” (Lippi-Green 2004, 292). In California, real estate agents did not give a caller who spoke African American or Chicano English the opportunity to view an apartment that they made available to a Standard English speaker, even though it was the same person making the inquiry in all three cases (Purnell et al. 1999). Similarly, Massey and Lundy (2001) established that lower working-class African American women in Philadelphia were rejected by real estate agents and/or penalized with higher rents and security deposits more than their male counterparts; callers who sounded “White” were not similarly mistreated. Research on the extent of harm done by linguistic profiling of Latina/os is scanty, although the practice is rampant and has deep historical roots. Caribbean Spanish speakers are a favorite target, and Dominicans are often singled out (Zentella 2007).