About
Wave - a Language Liberation Hub is a home for language justice workers and trainers who share a vision for growing our community of practice and the capacity of our movements and communities to create linguistic democracy.
While the US doesn’t have an official language, English-language dominance and linguicism present an ongoing challenge for advancing social justice. A majority of institutions and organizations operate from a “professional” English-only model that permeates social movement culture and daily life. At Wave, we believe one piece to the solution is Language Justice (the practice of using language as a tool not simply to help people access institutions rooted in language dominance, but to challenge and dismantle that dominance to build a more equitable society.)
Key Terms
These are a few terms we often reference when discussing our work that you might not be familiar with.
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A system of oppression based on language that results in structural advantages for dominant language (English) speakers and disadvantages for non-dominant language speakers. (Definition from Antena Aire in their 2021 edition of How to Build Language Justice)
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Language Justice is an ever-evolving framework and set of practices that ensure that people can lead, speak, and participate fully in movement building and, in their communities, regardless of the languages or linguistic variants they speak. Language Justice pairs interpretation and translation with an analysis of how power operates through language to create multilingual spaces and decenter English. (Definition by Allison Corbett here)
Wave’s programming intervenes on a capacity-building level, partnering with organizations to ensure that they have the tools to create and sustain the infrastructure required for language justice, as well as advocate for it within their own networks. Wave also works to directly support language workers, providing Interpretation for Social Justice training, and facilitating a Language Justice Network for mutual support and community-building amongst new and experienced language workers.
