The Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI)

The Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI) is an in-progress, (soon-to-be) open-access data corpus produced by a group of scholars aiming to better understand and address particular forms of racialized linguistic violence. The interactions in the CLDI, comprised of videos drawn primarily from institutional security cameras and private citizens’ cell phones, show individuals being harassed in some way for the language they are speaking or otherwise endorsing while sharing public space (e.g., at a store or restaurant, in a public park or parking lot).

While difficult to calculate quantify in precise terms just how prevalent these sorts of confrontations are, Bonnie Urciuoli, in her seminal work on Puerto Rican Spanish speakers living in New York, for instance, acutely notes: “Nearly every Spanish-speaking bilingual I know…has experienced complaints about using Spanish in a public place” (1996:35, our emphasis). Such interactions constitute concrete instances of a specific genre of language policing and discrimination in everyday public social life—one that has been reported to be on the rise in communities across the globe.

Our aim is for the CLDI to debut in Fall 2024, with a few analytic papers from the project already having been published prior (see below). As opposed to being purely an academic pursuit, our aim is for these materials to additionally be used in the community, and in various workplace settings, as the basis for a range of projects, activities, courses, and inquiries. Check back here for updates!

The Research Team

After coming across various news stories featuring this sort of video footage, Prof. Raymond began assembling a small collection of exemplars, which in 2016 were incorporated into teaching materials for courses at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After informally gathering a handful of instances over the years, in Spring 2020, Fall 2021, and Fall 2022, working groups in the Department of Linguistics, comprised of both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty, aimed to expand this collection of cases toward the development of a larger dataset. Throughout this data-collection process, we also began generating more detailed transcripts, holding collaborative data sessions, launching preliminary single-case analyses, and discussing possibilities for how to make the Corpus and its contents publicly available online. This multifaceted data-management process over several years is what ultimately gave rise to the interdisciplinary, international, and cross-institutional set of researchers seen below.  

Research Output (so far!)

PAPERS

Hoey, Elliott M., and Chase Wesley Raymond. (Frth.). Racist Renditions: Mock Language in Interaction. In Nadja Tadic and Hansun Waring (Eds.), Critical Conversation Analysis. Multilingual Matters.

Marrese, Olivia H., Chase Wesley Raymond, Barbara A. Fox, Cecilia E. Ford, and Megan Pielke. (2021). The Grammar of Obviousness: Gesture in Argument Sequences. Frontiers in Communication 6:663067. (Special Issue: ‘The Grammar-Body Interface in Social Interaction’; Leelo Keevallik, Xiaoting Li, Simona Pekarek-Doehler, Eds.)

Henry, Jacob. (2021). ‘You came here to get tacos, bro!’: Place references as argumentative resources. Colorado Research in Linguistics 25.

UPCOMING TALKS

PAST TALKS

May 25, 2023 - Department of Sociology, UCLA
(Raymond) The Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI) and the Public Policing of Talk.

June 26 - July 2, 2023 - International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA-23), Brisbane, Australia.
(Raymond & Hoey) Racist Renditions: Mock Language and the Public Policing of Talk.

July 12, 2022 - Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS)
(Raymond) Language Policy in and as Social Action: On the Use of Nation-State Declaratives as Accounts in the Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction.

May 25, 2022 - Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS)
(Hoey & Raymond) Racist Renditions: Mock Language in Interaction.

August 12, 2021 - Ethnomethodology & Conversation Analysis for Racial Justice working group
(Raymond & Albert) Introducing the Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction.