Babylonia (Dec 2024)
Tackling linguistic discrimination
Abstract
Between September and December 2023, Babylonia collected questions from parents regarding their children's language development. This article aims to answer the following questions: • It is 2024: why does our society still discriminate so strongly against certain languages and dialects? A Tigrinya-speaking child receives little appreciation from educational institutions compared to an English-speaking child. What are we still doing wrong? Who is most responsible for this inequality? How could these asymmetries be reduced as soon as possible? Why are decision-makers not interested in changing this? • People always say that we should cultivate children's native/first languages. However, our family language is not welcome at school as part of the regular timetable, i.e., it is not promoted – isn't this institutional discrimination? Why is this not (yet) being discussed in Switzerland? Is linguicism not an issue?
