Acceso usuarios
Luisa Martín Rojo 
, Adil Moustaoui, Ane Ortega
While the role of language in inequality is often acknowledged, much remains unknown about how language-mediated inequality occurs. This paper seeks to move the field forward by developing a comprehensive approach to language inequality. The multi-site EquiLing project applied participatory action research (PAR) from a Freirian perspective, focusing on the Madrid region and the Basque Country. In both settings, researchers and participants co-constructed spaces to express and analyze experiences of language inequality. Participants reported the repeated exercise of a power technique – language surveillance – which operated on specific language features of the speakers. Participants’ accounts of their experiences together with shared analyses brought to light, in the first place, the pervasive, ubiquitous, and all-encompassing nature of language surveillance – the continuous observation and assessment of language practices and repertoires that permeate people’s behaviours, bodies, and minds. The article focuses, therefore, on how surveillance, a technique of power, is exercised not only by institutions and their representatives, but also in a myriad of everyday encounters. Secondly, this article highlights the importance of often implicit “speakerhood models” in the exercise of surveillance and, consequently, in the construction of language-based inequality. The research participants’ analysis reveals how speakers who conform to these speakerhood models perceive their social position as superior and authorized to impose negative sanctions on speakers with diverse and multilingual repertoires who deviate from these models. At the same time, speakers subjected to surveillance often contribute it, by internalizing norms and spekearhood models, and performing self-evaluation, that subalternize them. Furthermore, the connection of these models to cultural and linguistic citizenship has a direct impact on community membership and access to resources. Thus, these models perpetuate inequality by constraining participants’ access to social domains, recognition, and active social participation. Finally, this article reflects on how we addressed the challenges of participatory and transformative research. We navigated institutional constraints and hierarchical dynamics by creating spaces of conscientization, fostering collaborative knowledge building, and encouraging participants to critically reflect on their experiences through narrative accounts. In addition, we employed a process of accompaniment to support participants as agents of change in addressing linguistic injustices. These procedures laid the groundwork for the transformative goals of the research.
