In recent decades, critical perspectives within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and discourse studies have emphasized language's pivotal role in shaping patterns of inequality. Scholars have highlighted how the management of linguistic resources—such as the imposition or exclusion of certain languages—not only mirrors existing social inequalities but actively contributes to their perpetuation. Despite these insights, our understanding of the intricate mechanisms through which language constructs inequality remains somewhat impressionistic.

This seminar aims to deepen our understanding of how linguistic aspects are integrated into and operate within various power techniques, which are understood as the methods utilized to exercise and perpetuate power within society. Our particular focus will be on surveillance—a disciplinary technique outlined by Foucault (1977)—which regulates and controls individuals’ behavior, bodies, and minds within specific institutions such as schools, prisons, or hospitals. Recently, this concept has been applied to language, termed 'language surveillance,' and introduced within the field of sociolinguistics. Scholars are exploring how language functions as a tool for monitoring and enforcing language norms and speaker models (Cushing 2022; Martín Rojo 2022; Martin Rojo and Márquez 2019).

The experiences and testimonies shared by participants in a Participatory Action Research within the EquiLing Madrid project, 'Towards a new linguistic citizenship: action research for the recognition of speakers in the educational field of the Community of Madrid,' reveal the presence of these power techniques, with linguistic surveillance standing out. The joint analysis of participants and researchers of these episodes shows surveillance as a practice of continuous, repeated, and ubiquitous observation and evaluation of linguistic practices and repertoires to which speakers are subjected. Furthermore, it illustrates how this surveillance is not only exercised by institutions and their representatives but also by a multitude of citizens in everyday situations, with clear effects on the recognition of speakers, their access to valued social spheres, and their participation in society. To capture how the linguistic component is integrated, first, we will analyze the interactional dynamics of linguistic surveillance. The analysis will focus on two aspects: the impact of habitus and how it influences the perception of the social position of the involved interlocutors. Secondly, it will analyze how this perception of the interlocutors' position depends on the extent to which they reproduce or deviate from certain canons or models of speakerhood. Thus, those who surveil adhere to these models, such as that of the native speaker, explaining why they perceive themselves as superior and authorized to correct and impose sanctions on speakers with diverse and multilingual repertoires that deviate from these models.

Finally, the analysis will show the connection of these models with cultural and political citizenship, and how they have a direct impact on belonging to the community and access to resources. Those who deviate from these models are seen as foreigners, less competent, worse speakers, and may even be treated as a 'risk' to the national project or to society as a whole. Thus, speaker models perpetuate inequality by limiting participants' access to social domains, recognition, and participation in society.

Luisa Martín Rojo

About the Higher seminar in Research on Bilingualism