Designing Language Access

Language Justice Resources

Organizations and Collectives

Austin Language Justice Collective

The Austin Language Justice Collective is a member organization that seeks to bridge language barriers so that all people, regardless of what language they speak, can participate equally in society. Their interpreters, translators and language justice advocates, act as conduits of communication—allowing people who speak different languages to successfully communicate with each other and build mutual understanding. Members are based throughout the U.S. Learn more here

Antena Aire: Experimentos Del Lenguaje

Antena Aire is a language justice and language experimentation collaborative, focusing on writing, art- and book-making, translating, interpreting, and language justice. They explore how critical views on language can help us to reimagine and rearticulate the worlds we inhabit. Based in Los Angeles and Houston. Learn more here

Language Justice Work: Checklist for creating multilingual spaces

Caracol Language Cooperative

The Caracol Interpreters Cooperative opens multilingual channels of communication to ignite language justice in our community. They work to create a world where language is not a barrier for exchange, but a helpful tool that can be used democratically to communicate, learn and strategize together. Based out of New York City. Learn more here

Cenzontle Language Justice Cooperative

Cenzontle Language Justice Cooperative believes in language justice to ensure they lift up all human dignity. They are interpreters, translators and consultants that strive to build bridges between communities working for liberation. Based in Asheville, North Carolina. Learn more here

Language Justice Work: Provides consulting, translating, interpreting, and training

Center for Participatory Change

Center for Participatory Change is a democratically run, non-hierarchical, multiracial organization. They collaborate with diverse networks to offer popular education, racial equity, and language justice trainings that have a state, national, and global reach. Based in Asheville, North Carolina and works deeply with communities in Western North Carolina. Learn more here

Language Justice Work: Created a language justice curriculum for community-based education. 

Communities Creating Healthy Environments

Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE) is a national capacity building initiative that supports diverse, community-based organizations and indigenous groups in developing effective, cutting-edge and culturally competent policy initiatives that address the root causes of childhood obesity for communities of color. Since their focus is on communities of color, they take a multilingual approach that is not only about translation, but about the way they value inclusion and access. Learn more here

Language Justice Work: Advocate for multilingual strategy 

Highlander Research and Education Center

Highlander Research and Education Center works with people fighting for justice, equality, and sustainability, supporting their efforts to take collective action to shape their own destiny. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing. they help create spaces — at Highlander and in local communities — where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. Based in New Market, Tennessee. Learn more here 

Language Justice Work: Provides training and resources for language justice

Just Communities

Just Communities offers cultural competency training to organizational leaders, education seminars for the general public, leadership training institutes for students and teachers, and customized consultation to local agencies for diversity and organizational change initiatives. They consciously work with people from a diverse cross-section of the community along the lines of race, income, gender, sexual orientation, age, and religious affiliation. Based in Santa Barbara,California. Learn more here

Language Justice Work: Provides support and coordination to a group of interpreters, the Language Justice Network, and advocates for language access and inclusion. 

Matahari Women Worker’s Center

Matahari Women Workers’ Center (“Matahari”) is an organization committed to building a world without economic violence and exploitation. Their community believes in the transformative power of survivors and is committed to developing the leadership of women of color, immigrants, and low-wage workers. Based in Boston, Massachusetts. Learn more here 

Language Justice Work: Matahari Women Workers’ Center launched a Movement Language Justice School (MLJS) in October 2020 to train up to 15 bilingual community members in language interpretation best practices, language justice principles and community organizing. 

The Praxis Project

Praxis Project is a national non-profit organization that works in partnership with national, regional, state, and local partners to achieve health equity and justice for all communities.Their mission is to build healthy communities by transforming the power relationships and structures that affect their lives and communities. Based in Oakland California. Learn more here

Language Justice work: language justice toolkit

Puyallup Tribe of Indians

Resources for learning Lushootseed.

Language justice work: Promoting cultural vitality for indigenous communities through decolonizing language education.

Southerners on New Ground 

Southerners on New Ground (SONG) is a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South.

They build, sustain, and connect a southern regional base of LBGTQ people in order to transform the region through strategic projects and campaigns developed in response to the current conditions in our communities. Based in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more here

Language Justice Work: Run a Language Justice Group

Washington State Coalition for Language Access

Washington State Coalition for Language Access (WASCLA) is an education and advocacy organization whose mission is to eliminate language barriers that prevent Washington residents from accessing essential services. They provide policy input on language access rights and responsibilities and how to create language assistance services that meet community needs; provides consultation and training on language access services; hosts a statewide Interpreter and Translator directory;and other activities to promote robust language access services. Learn more here

Language Justice Tools

Language Justice Curriculum

By the Center for Participatory Change

This curriculum is targeted to interpreters and people interested in interpreting who want to understand language justice or interpretation in a social justice context.

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Language Justice Toolkit: Multilingual Strategies for Community Organizing

Created by Communities Creating Healthy Environments’s (CCHE) 

View Toolkit

How to Build Language Justice

Created by Atena Aire

English

Bilingual in Spanish/English

Checklist for Creating Multilingual Spaces 

Created by Atena Aire

View Checklist

Books and Articles

Examining Issues Facing Communities of Colors Today

Edited by Leah C. Neubauer, Dominica McBride,  Andrea D. Guajardo,  Wanda D. Casillas and Melvin E. Hall

The intersection of ethnicity, class, gender, and race and attention to advocacy, inclusion and equity have never been more enmeshed with program evaluation than is the case today. Sponsors of evaluation and evaluators seek guidance on how and when to embrace these issues in the populations impacted by programs under review.

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Intérpretes y Traductores de Lenguas Indígenas

These conference proceedings describe the work, perspectives and practices of indigenous language interpreters and translators in Mexico.

Edited by Laura Gonzales

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Language Policy and Linguistic Justice: Economic, Philosophical and Sociolinguistic Approaches

Edited by Michele Gazzola, Torsten Templin, and Bengt-Arne Wickström

Language policies are increasingly acknowledged as being a necessary component of many decisions taken in the areas of the labor market, education, minority languages, mobility, and social inclusion of migrants. Topics covered include: theoretical models of linguistic justice and linguistic disadvantage; the assessment of the socio-economic consequences of language policies; the evaluation of the costs, benefits, and degree of inclusion of language planning measures; the politics of migrants’ linguistic integration; as well as multilingualism and economic activities. 

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Language and Social Justice in Practice

Edited by Netta Avineri, Laura R. Graham, and Eric J. Johnson

From bilingual education and racial epithets to gendered pronouns and immigration discourses, language is a central concern in contemporary conversations and controversies surrounding social inequality. Developed as a collaborative effort by members of the American Anthropological Association’s Language and Social Justice Task Force, this innovative volume synthesizes scholarly insights on the relationship between patterns of communication and the creation of more just societies. Using case studies by leading and emergent scholars and practitioners written especially for undergraduate audiences, the book is ideal for introductory courses on social justice in linguistics and anthropology. 

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Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice

By John Baugh

Baugh coined the phrase ‘linguistic profiling’ based on experimental studies of housing discrimination, and expanded upon those findings to promote equity in education, employment, medicine and the law. This book is the product of the culmination of these studies, devoted to the advancement of equality and justice globally.

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Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics 

by Ingrid Piller

This book explores the ways in which linguistic diversity mediates social justice in liberal democracies undergoing rapid change due to high levels of migration and economic globalization. Focusing on the linguistic dimensions of economic inequality, cultural domination and imparity of political participation, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice employs a case-study approach to real-world instances of linguistic injustice. 

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Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

By April Baker-Bell

Bringing together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts.

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Linguistic Justice: International Law and Language Policy

By Jacquelyn Mowbray

Mowbray’s book draws on the methodology of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose ideas of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ offer a way of understanding the changing significance of language to human identity, and the way in which language becomes a focal point for the exercise of social power. This analysis reveals the limitations of contemporary international law on language, and charts a course towards the achievement of greater ‘linguistic justice’.

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Linguistic Justice: Van Parijs and his Critics 1st Edition

by Helder De Schutter (Editor), David Robichaud (Editor) 

The world contains over 6000 languages and less than 200 states to accommodate them. This creates the important normative question of how to respond politically to linguistic diversity. What is a just language policy? Are language minorities entitled to language protection? Should language rights be accorded to immigrants? Is the universal rise of English as a lingua franca to be applauded or to be regretted?

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