Investigating potential linguistic prejudice in the youth justice system: a participatory child-centred sociolinguistic approach to evaluate the impac

This proposal is tailored to the requirements set out in the project funding brief and begins with a brief overview of the literature and current debates surrounding the topic, including any potential gaps in the research and how these may be addressed. Literature review

Language and accent are both identity markers to age, gender and race which are protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. However, language and accent are not protected characteristics, meaning linguistic biases that people hold can cause stigmatism and negatively affect the number of opportunities people have access to.

Young people can face these stigmatisms from multiple directions early on, as language policy and policing in schools is based on standard language ideologies, meaning children can be considered as 'deficit' language users if they speak in ways outside of dominant language practices (Cushing, 2021), which includes speaking in regional accents, ESOL speakers, or using 'urban youth language' (Drummond, 2018). Children can face stigmatism in wider aspects of society due to the ways they speak, with discourses in the mainstream media and in British politics criticising their employability prospects or labelling them as 'uneducated' (Dray and Drummond, n.d.).

Standardised language ideologies perpetuate potential for linguistic discrimination within the Youth Justice System (YJS) because they create value judgments and biases about the ways people speak, regardless of the content. Cantone et al., (2019) demonstrate that accent bias towards stereotypical ways of speaking can lead to harsher judgements by jurors, especially when racial bias is included.

In a recent study conducted in the UK Frumkin & Stone (2020) state that even eyewitness accounts by people who are not on trial are subject to value judgements on their accents, alongside age and race, with 'lower status accents' being rated less favourably than 'higher status accents'. These cases demonstrate the high stakes and implications that the sound of our voice can hold, however research into how young people face this level of discrimination within the multiple different stages of the YJS is scarce.

This research proposes to address that gap by using a creative and participatory methodology to explore, unpick and reimagine situations where potential linguistic discrimination may occur.

Narrowminded assumptions of what language is can cause impactful moments of communication to be overlooked. This research proposes to adopt a broad definition of language to use the term 'languaging' (Badwan, 2021) which seeks to represent the multitude of communicative and linguistic repertoires, and multimodal practices of all language users, but in this case especially those inherent within children and young people.

Language is much more than communication and by using languaging, which views language as an action (Badwan, 2021), it becomes possible to explore silence, body language, gesture, emotion, and facial expressions to form a more holistic understanding of children's experiences with potential linguistic discrimination in the YJS.

The research will be informed by the Participatory Youth Framework which recognises the rights of a child to be heard and included in the discussions throughout the various stages of decision making in the YJS (Participatory Youth Practice Engagement Framework, n.d.). Through creative participatory sessions that build upon each other and unfurl as a process, the children and young people are considered as co-researchers who bring their lived experiences of potential linguistic discrimination in the YJS, alongside their personal histories and knowledge bases, to challenge pre-existing hierarchies and dominant language ideologies that place children and young people as deficient language users (Cushing, 2023).