Wesley Y Leonard
Biographic Data
| ID | 217836 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wesley Y Leonard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wesley Y |
| FAMILY NAME | Leonard |
| SIGNATURE | LEONARD W Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Riverside |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8792-4414 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
A Relationally Accountable Sociolinguistics Is an Ethical Sociolinguistics
Increasing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics Through Small Teaching
Research Article| May 01 2024 Increasing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics Through Small Teaching Christina Bjorndahl; Christina Bjorndahl Carnegie Mellon University christina bjorndahl is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches a variety of courses for the linguistics major. Her research in laboratory phonology focuses on cross-linguistic investigatio…
Engaging Indigenous Language Learning Through Relational Accountability: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”
In their provocative article, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa have captured how dominant notions of competence reinforce normative whiteness as universal and fail to account for processes of racialization in language learning. Building upon their goal of “shifting the locus of enunciation in ways that provide a glimpse into alternative worlds beyond colonial logics,” in this commmentary, we illustrate one such alternative in which language and la…
Refusing “Endangered Languages” Narratives
Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society's consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices t…
Who is (not) engaged with undoing Raciolinguistics
I have no conflicts of interest
Storying an interconnected web of relationships in Indigenous language reclamation work and scholarship
Indigenous language work is manifested in a diversity of community-led responses of resilience and persistence. Indigenous persons who are reclaiming their languages have entered academia with goals of contributing to community language reclamation efforts and broader resurgence movements. Adapting Archibald's (2008) concept of storyworkexperiential narratives that privilege a cultural lens-we take a dialogic approach for scholar-educators to sto…
Toward an Anti‐Racist Linguistic Anthropology: An Indigenous Response to White Supremacy
Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to epistemological racism (Kubota 2020) in the discipline of Linguistic Anthropology, which I argue institutionalizes and reproduces white supremacy. I extend Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, which examines the co‐naturalization of race and language, to the co‐naturalization of race and language scholars. Through a critical analysis…
Learning by Observing and Pitching In in the Context of Sleeping Language Reclamation
Insights from Native American Studies for theorizing race and racism in linguistics (Response to Charity Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz)
Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to Native Americans, who are unique among racial groups in the United States since ‘Native American’ is also a political status and tribes are nations. Focusing on the fundamental tenet of tribal critical race theory that colonization is endemic to society (Brayboy 2005), I argue that the ways in which Native American languages are represented in linguist…
Musings on Native American language reclamation and sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistic approaches to Native American languages are best conducted as part of a project of "language reclamation," argues Wesley Y. Leonard. He discusses how framings of Indigenous languages as "endangered," while in some ways well-intentioned, replicate the distance of language communities from scholarly research. An emphasis on reclamation - "efforts by Indigenous communities to claim the right to speak their heritage languages" - highl…
Indigenous Languages through a Reclamation Lens
Hear Our Languages, Hear Our Voices: Storywork as Theory and Praxis in Indigenous-Language Reclamation
Storywork provides an epistemic, pedagogical, and methodological lens through which to examine Indigenous language reclamation in practice. We theorize the meaning of language reclamation in diverse Indigenous communities based on firsthand narratives of Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, Mohawk, Navajo, and Native Hawaiian language reclamation. Language reclamation is not about preserving the abstract entity “language,” but is rather about voice, w…
Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada
Book Review| October 01 2013 Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada. By Perley, Bernard C.. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. $30.00 paper.) Wesley Y. Leonard Wesley Y. Leonard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2013) 60 (4): 7…
Reframing language reclamation programmes for everybody’s empowerment
Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants, they can also inhibit those who do not identify with the cultural values or practices that these programmes promote. I theorize that this occurs because ‘reclamation’ programmes evoke an essentialist notion of culture whereby participants feel pressure to act, think or speak in certain ways, particularly those that are deemed to be ‘traditional’. However, since pa…
Challenging "Extinction" through Modern Miami Language Practices
While American Indian language reclamation efforts are often motivated by a desire to learn and embrace traditional culture, they generally occur within multicultural populations where community members speak the dominant group’s language(s), practice its ways, and use contemporary technologies. For this and related reasons, some mixture of the “traditional” and the “modern” is a natural trend and outcome of such efforts. However, indigenous comm…
Hear Our Languages, Hear Our Voices: Storywork as Theory and Praxis in Indigenous-Language Reclamation
Storywork provides an epistemic, pedagogical, and methodological lens through which to examine Indigenous language reclamation in practice. We theorize the meaning of language reclamation in diverse Indigenous communities based on firsthand narratives of Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, Mohawk, Navajo, and Native Hawaiian language reclamation. Language reclamation is not about preserving the abstract entity “language,” but is rather about voice, w…
Reframing language reclamation programmes for everybody’s empowerment
Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants, they can also inhibit those who do not identify with the cultural values or practices that these programmes promote. I theorize that this occurs because ‘reclamation’ programmes evoke an essentialist notion of culture whereby participants feel pressure to act, think or speak in certain ways, particularly those that are deemed to be ‘traditional’. However, since pa…
Refusing “Endangered Languages” Narratives
Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society's consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices t…
Toward an Anti‐Racist Linguistic Anthropology: An Indigenous Response to White Supremacy
Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to epistemological racism (Kubota 2020) in the discipline of Linguistic Anthropology, which I argue institutionalizes and reproduces white supremacy. I extend Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, which examines the co‐naturalization of race and language, to the co‐naturalization of race and language scholars. Through a critical analysis…
Insights from Native American Studies for theorizing race and racism in linguistics (Response to Charity Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz)
Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to Native Americans, who are unique among racial groups in the United States since ‘Native American’ is also a political status and tribes are nations. Focusing on the fundamental tenet of tribal critical race theory that colonization is endemic to society (Brayboy 2005), I argue that the ways in which Native American languages are represented in linguist…
Increasing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics Through Small Teaching
Research Article| May 01 2024 Increasing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics Through Small Teaching Christina Bjorndahl; Christina Bjorndahl Carnegie Mellon University christina bjorndahl is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches a variety of courses for the linguistics major. Her research in laboratory phonology focuses on cross-linguistic investigatio…
Indigenous Languages through a Reclamation Lens
Challenging "Extinction" through Modern Miami Language Practices
While American Indian language reclamation efforts are often motivated by a desire to learn and embrace traditional culture, they generally occur within multicultural populations where community members speak the dominant group’s language(s), practice its ways, and use contemporary technologies. For this and related reasons, some mixture of the “traditional” and the “modern” is a natural trend and outcome of such efforts. However, indigenous comm…
Reframing language reclamation programmes for everybody’s empowerment
Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants, they can also inhibit those who do not identify with the cultural values or practices that these programmes promote. I theorize that this occurs because ‘reclamation’ programmes evoke an essentialist notion of culture whereby participants feel pressure to act, think or speak in certain ways, particularly those that are deemed to be ‘traditional’. However, since pa…
Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada
Book Review| October 01 2013 Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada. By Perley, Bernard C.. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. $30.00 paper.) Wesley Y. Leonard Wesley Y. Leonard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2013) 60 (4): 7…
Hear Our Languages, Hear Our Voices: Storywork as Theory and Praxis in Indigenous-Language Reclamation
Storywork provides an epistemic, pedagogical, and methodological lens through which to examine Indigenous language reclamation in practice. We theorize the meaning of language reclamation in diverse Indigenous communities based on firsthand narratives of Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, Mohawk, Navajo, and Native Hawaiian language reclamation. Language reclamation is not about preserving the abstract entity “language,” but is rather about voice, w…
Indigenous Languages through a Reclamation Lens
Learning by Observing and Pitching In in the Context of Sleeping Language Reclamation
Insights from Native American Studies for theorizing race and racism in linguistics (Response to Charity Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz)
Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to Native Americans, who are unique among racial groups in the United States since ‘Native American’ is also a political status and tribes are nations. Focusing on the fundamental tenet of tribal critical race theory that colonization is endemic to society (Brayboy 2005), I argue that the ways in which Native American languages are represented in linguist…
Musings on Native American language reclamation and sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistic approaches to Native American languages are best conducted as part of a project of "language reclamation," argues Wesley Y. Leonard. He discusses how framings of Indigenous languages as "endangered," while in some ways well-intentioned, replicate the distance of language communities from scholarly research. An emphasis on reclamation - "efforts by Indigenous communities to claim the right to speak their heritage languages" - highl…
Storying an interconnected web of relationships in Indigenous language reclamation work and scholarship
Indigenous language work is manifested in a diversity of community-led responses of resilience and persistence. Indigenous persons who are reclaiming their languages have entered academia with goals of contributing to community language reclamation efforts and broader resurgence movements. Adapting Archibald's (2008) concept of storyworkexperiential narratives that privilege a cultural lens-we take a dialogic approach for scholar-educators to sto…
Toward an Anti‐Racist Linguistic Anthropology: An Indigenous Response to White Supremacy
Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to epistemological racism (Kubota 2020) in the discipline of Linguistic Anthropology, which I argue institutionalizes and reproduces white supremacy. I extend Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, which examines the co‐naturalization of race and language, to the co‐naturalization of race and language scholars. Through a critical analysis…
Engaging Indigenous Language Learning Through Relational Accountability: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”
In their provocative article, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa have captured how dominant notions of competence reinforce normative whiteness as universal and fail to account for processes of racialization in language learning. Building upon their goal of “shifting the locus of enunciation in ways that provide a glimpse into alternative worlds beyond colonial logics,” in this commmentary, we illustrate one such alternative in which language and la…
Refusing “Endangered Languages” Narratives
Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society's consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices t…
Who is (not) engaged with undoing Raciolinguistics
I have no conflicts of interest
Increasing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics Through Small Teaching
Research Article| May 01 2024 Increasing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics Through Small Teaching Christina Bjorndahl; Christina Bjorndahl Carnegie Mellon University christina bjorndahl is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches a variety of courses for the linguistics major. Her research in laboratory phonology focuses on cross-linguistic investigatio…
A Relationally Accountable Sociolinguistics Is an Ethical Sociolinguistics
Sociology (13 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (12 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Indigenous (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (5 works)