Abstract
Aims:
This article examines linguistic bias as experienced by migrants of different language backgrounds in Australia, focusing on their construction of Self as shaped by the perpetrators of bias.
Approach, data, and analysis:
It draws on narrative interview data and applies a thematic analysis method, and makes use of the Sartrean conception of gaze in relation to the Self and the Other to understand how the participants make sense of their Self before the Other on being exposed to linguistic bias.
Findings:
The participants framed their awareness of their Self, in the gaze of the Other, as an “incompetent” or “unbelievably competent” English speaker/writer who was forced into pre-determined categories of race, language, or residency status. They gazed back at the Other and were not willing to accept the negative dimensions about their Self as imposed by the latter. The participants, in addition, became the social Other in the eyes and ears of the bias perpetrators who represented/supported the social Self.
Originality:
Studies which discuss incidents when migrants receive biased comments on their English competence do not focus much on linguistic-bias encounterers’ construction of self in relation to bias perpetrators. The present study attempts to shed light on this issue.
Implications:
The idea about a particular form of English associated with a certain type of English users needs to be critically examined and debated.
Introduction
Linguistic bias is an umbrella term or concept for which scholars have provided different definitions for the purposes of their research. In a review article on the issue, Peters (2024) makes an attempt to classify various phenomena related to linguistic bias. For Peters, linguistic bias is an (un)conscious tendency to view some people’s language as “nonstandard” (or substandard, non-regional, bad, etc.) more negatively. Among the classifications of linguistic bias, he focuses on LX variation bias (bias against speakers of English as a second/foreign language) which is different from L1 variation bias (bias against speakers of English as a mother tongue). He also distinguishes linguistic stereotype bias, which links features of one’s language practices (accent, word choice, etc.) to aspects of one’s social identity or background, from linguistic disfluency bias, which is about an audience’s unfamiliarity with features of one’s language practices.
Previous studies that bring either or both LX and L1 variation bias into focus often draw attention to bias holders, and are mainly grounded in quantitative methods such as stimuli surveys or matched-guise techniques. Most studies report that LX English accents were often assessed more unfavorably than L1 English accents. LX English accents were, for example, rated lower in terms of status, solidarity, intelligibility, credibility, trustworthiness, and/or competence (e.g., Frumkin, 2007; Lindemann, 2003; Pantos & Perkins, 2013). However, LX English accents were not always negatively evaluated, and this is demonstrated in studies by Hendriks et al. (2023) and Nejjari et al. (2020). The LX English users whose accent was rated relatively highly in these two studies, notably, had a European (Dutch) origin. This points to the fact that the accent of different LX English users can be perceived differently, depending on their racial/ethnic/national background. This is further evidenced in D. Sharma et al.’s (2022) and Levon et al.’s (2020) work on accent bias in the United Kingdom, in which some LX English accents (e.g., French) were placed near the top while other LX English accents (e.g., Afro-Caribbean, Indian) were put near the bottom of the ratings table, in terms of prestige and pleasantness.
In addition, as linguistic bias is when people tend to view others’ language practices as “nonstandard” negatively (Peters, 2024), the observation that someone’s English is good or bad can fall into the category of linguistic bias. Peterson (2020) indicates that “good English” and “bad English” are simplified terms which are comparable to the more official notions of “standard English” and “nonstandard English.” Lippi-Green (1997) suggests that standard language ideology is a form of bias where an abstracted, idealized, homogeneous version of language, often of the upper-middle class, is imposed on other language speakers. Our extended literature review suggests that studies that discuss (or occasionally mention) LX English speakers’ experiences of receiving comments such as “your English is good/not good” where their English proficiency was seen to “mismatch” with their racial appearance often focus on those who encounter bias and are mainly grounded in qualitative methods. These studies, nevertheless, do not describe these comments as a form of linguistic bias, but refer to them as a manifestation of racism (e.g., Gonzalez, 2024; Kubota et al., 2023), microaggression (e.g., Chen & Liu, 2020; Mujica & Bridges, 2023), nationality and ethnicity talk (e.g., Zhu & Li, 2016), or occasionally, as an English proficiency stereotype (e.g., Hwang & Beauregard, 2022). We bring this issue into our study and explore the phenomenon from a linguistic bias perspective. We particularly focus on linguistic stereotype bias, maintaining Peters’ (2024) argument that it is necessary to distinguish linguistic disfluency bias and linguistic stereotype bias (although it is not always easy to do so). Linguistic disfluency bias (e.g., an “innocent” observation that one’s English is good or bad) is not always a manifestation of prejudice or unfair discrimination, because the audience may have difficulties in understanding an unfamiliar form of English, or expect a clearer version of English due to study/work requirements. However, when such an observation is linked with or driven by one or more features of the English speaker’s social identity (such as racial appearance, as found in the literature discussed above), what is considered “good/bad English” can be dependent on who speaks that kind of English (cf. Nguyen & Hajek, 2022; Peterson, 2020), and that is where linguistic stereotype bias occurs.
In this article, we explore linguistic bias as reported by migrants who are LX English users in Australia, who experience implicit/explicit evaluations of their English competence by other people, believe that their English is biased because of their social (e.g., racial, language, residential) background, and disagree with the biased assumption made by the people who comment on their English. Although there are studies which discuss or occasionally mention incidents when migrants receive comments such as “your English is (so) good, not good, bad, etc.,” as previously indicated, they do not focus much on linguistic-bias encounterers’ construction of self in relation to bias perpetrators. The present study attempts to shed light on this issue, which depicts how the participants make sense of their Self as constructed before the Other. In so doing, it aims to contribute significantly to the scholarly discussions on selfhood and otherhood in linguistic discrimination, marginalization, and bias. Describing the participants’ sense of self from a Sartrean perspective, our study provides a fresh understanding of how the hegemony of English has put pressure on LX English users in traditionally English-dominant contexts. Australia is such a context which is also a linguistically diverse and historically stratified nation, given its significant number of indigenous and migrant populations. In this multilingual society, a monolingual mindset remains prevalent (Clyne, 2005; Hajek & Slaughter, 2014), whereby residents are expected to not only use only English in social interactions (e.g., Nguyen & Hajek, 2025; Nguyen & Makoni, 2026) but also adapt to a common version of English, and where migrants’ accents or ways of speaking English can be discriminated against (see Dryden & Dovchin, 2024). In “English-imperial” and migrant-receiving Australia, issues related to good/bad, standard/nonstandard, or native/non-native English associated with local and migrant speakers are frequent. For this reason, we extend the discussion on linguistic bias by choosing Australia as a case study of such a type of context. We take both spoken-English bias and written-English bias into account, thus enriching the literature on how LX English migrants deal with normative/hegemonic language ideologies, as compared with L1 English locals, in the host society where they are living.
Theoretical Framework: Gaze and the Construction of Self Before the Other
We depict linguistic-bias encounterers’ sense of self as shaped through the eyes and ears of bias perpetrators by referring to the influential French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of gaze in relation to the imagination of Self and Other. Although Sartre’s work often emphasizes phenomenological-existential understandings about different forms of individual recognition, his ideas of the relationship between gaze, the Self, and the Other are relevant to the focus of the present study which is about migrants’ construction of self in experiencing linguistic bias. Sartre characterizes gaze as a ground for the Self to (re)define itself before the Other, which can alter and provide new meanings to the recognition of the Self (T. Kim & Ng, 2019; Sartre, 1992). For Sartre (1992), gaze is an alienating force released from another person who is interacting with the individual in question. Gaze is, thus, the gaze of the Other, through which the Self encounters the presence of the Other. The individual’s consciousness of their selfhood can therefore be established through the gaze of the Other, as observed by Sartre (1992, p. 287): “I am the way the other sees me, and nothing but that.”
Sartre (1992) highlights negativity in the relationship between the Self and the Other in the context of unequal power relations. When the individual experiences discriminatory or biased judgments by the Other, for instance, they construct a public Self (which is different from their private Self) under the Other’s discriminatory or biased gaze. Sartre observes that the gaze of the Other, in this situation, can introduce a new negative dimension to the individual’s self imagination, go beyond the latter’s immediate control, rob them of their freedom (T. Kim & Ng, 2019), and pass on to the individual an alienated and subordinate status which is not chosen by them. Under judgments of the Other, the individual can express their sense of a vulnerable self; and the Other’s gaze then becomes an indeterminate cause of the individual’s vulnerability (P. Sharma & Barua, 2017).
Language plays a central role in human’s individual recognitions of their (negative) relationship and interactions with one another. Although Sartre does not mention linguistic behaviors in his extensive discussions on gaze, the Self, and the Other, he occasionally describes the gaze of the Other (which is often referred to as a “look” in studies engaging with Sartre’s work) in aural terms: “I apprehend immediately when I hear the branches crackling behind me” or “all of a sudden I hear footsteps in the hall” (Sartre, 1992, pp. 347, 349). Gaze, thus, entails not only visual but also auditory dimensions, and attitudes toward language practices in interactions between individuals are where either or both visual and auditory features of individuals’ gaze articulate themselves. Gaze is, thus, associated with the hearing and/or looking of the Other, which—with its ears and eyes—gazes at the Self’s way of speaking and/or writing a language (cf. Pérez Cavana, 2024). Negativity in the relationship between the Self and the Other can, in addition, be found in linguistic bias situations, where an individual’s speaking/writing practices are judgmentally gazed at by another person.
Gaze, furthermore, is not only about the gaze of the Other. There can be “exchanges of gaze” between the Other and the Self, as the Self can make effort to “restore” or “recover” its own freedom against the biased gaze of the Other. In confronting judgments, for instance, the individual can gaze back at the Other, where they add a new (negative) dimension to their imagination of the latter (P. Sharma & Barua, 2017). Gaze is, thus, interdependent, mutual, and reflexive (T. Kim & Ng, 2019). In gazing back at the Other, either in an evasive or aggressive way, the Self may open up possibilities for liberating and empowering itself where it longs for a better self or resists the Other’s judgments (Jefferson, 2024; P. Sharma & Barua, 2017). The individual’s consciousness of their selfhood can therefore be not only about “I am the way the other sees me, and nothing but that” (Sartre, 1992, p. 287), but also about “I am the way the other sees me, and more than that” (Pérez Cavana, 2019, p. 80, with original emphasis).
The discussion on the biased gaze and the construction of Self before the Other serves as a theoretical framework for examining two research questions:
The Study
Approach, Participants, and Data
This article is part of a larger-scale project investigating the language life of migrants in Australia, in which we approached and collected data from participants of diverse demographic backgrounds. Referring to related research on self and identity in applied linguistics, the present study draws on a narrative approach, which is to understand events and experiences in the lives of participants, and is focused in particular on the content—what happened and why—(rather than the form) of the narratives (Elliott, 2005). Four participants who narrated details of their experiences about linguistic bias were selected for discussion in this study. They are all, incidentally, female, and have a tertiary-level education. We refer to them as Kaira, Sunila, Taina, and Ting (pseudonyms): Kaira (age range: 27-30) was a researcher and had lived in Australia for about 5-7 years at the time of data collection, but did not have immediate family members here. She identified herself as an Indian who spoke Hindi as a mother tongue and English as a second language. Kaira believed that her English proficiency was at an intermediate level. In Australia, she sometimes spoke Hindi when she met people who she called “North Indians.” Sunila (age range: 24-26) said she was a Master’s student, an educator, and occasionally a delivery driver, who had lived in Australia for less than 2 years. She noted that she was a South Asian and a Sri Lankan, who spoke Sinhalese as a first language. In addition to English which she believed that she could speak fluently, she knew French at an intermediate level. In Australia, Sunila often spoke Sinhalese with her partner, her community members, and her family back home (over the telephone). Taina (age range: over 30) was an accountant who left China for Australia when she was 5 years old. She identified her ethnic background as Chinese, and said that she spoke Cantonese as a mother tongue. In addition to English of which she believed that she had an advanced level, she could speak Mandarin and some Japanese. Taina often spoke Cantonese with her parents and family members who were in Australia, and English with her husband and children. Ting (age range: 24-26) was a student who had lived in Australia for less than 2 years. She referred to herself as a Chinese person from Taiwan. She said her mother tongue was Mandarin, although she also spoke Hokkien with senior members of her family back in Taiwan. Ting noted that her English proficiency was at an advanced level. In Australia, she spoke Mandarin and Hokkien when she met friends from Taiwan, and when she interacted with Taiwanese patients in a medical center during her placement.
As narratives can be found in qualitative interviews (Elliott, 2005), we selected extracts from our interview conversations with the participants as the main source of data. During the conversations, the interviewer employed a form of narrative interviewing to explore events and situations related to linguistic bias which the participants encountered in the past. Narrative interviewing is where the interviewer uses open, non-leading questions, gives priority to the elicitation of the participants’ stories without intervening or interrupting what the latter said, and listens with no judgmental validation of what the latter shares (Esin, 2011). Information about the project was communicated with the participants before the interviews via email correspondence. As they resided in different parts of Australia, they were invited to attend an online meeting, and this allowed for convenience in terms of time and travel, as well as better ensuring their privacy. A research assistant who was our project team member met and talked with each of them in a one-to-one, informal conversation on Zoom. Interviews lasted from 45 min to 1 hr, depending on how much they wanted to discuss. All interviews with the four participants were conducted in English and were recorded with their consent.
We used the thematic analysis model, which centers on the content of the narratives—“what is ‘told’ rather than the aspects of ‘telling’” (Riessman, 2008, p. 54), for analyzing data. We followed four stages in applying this model: The first stage was selecting from the participants’ narratives subtexts/segments that are relevant to the research questions, and bringing into consideration contextual details of the segments. The second stage involved defining thematic categories: two major categories—including “bias in speaking English” and “bias in writing English”—were identified, and they were linked with subcategories such as “bias related to racial characteristics,” “bias related to language acquisition,” or “bias related to (non)nativeness,” and so on. In the third stage, separate utterances across the narrative texts were assigned to relevant categories. Finally, during the fourth stage, the contents in each thematic category were used to explain what the participants could want to convey in terms of Self and Other as revealed in their narratives (Esin, 2011).
Researcher Positionality
As we are the authors of this study, our positionality had an influence on the way we understood and described the participants’ individual recognitions. We acknowledge that we may bring our own subjective attitudes, perspectives, and experiences to the data analysis and interpretation, but observe that researcher subjectivity is unavoidable in qualitative research. In addition, we are aware that in studying self and identity in multilingual contexts, it is necessary to take into account researchers’ demographic background (Li, 2000), especially characteristics which are comparable to those of their research participants. Together we make an excellent team with diverse linguistic, racial, and residential attributes which were also mentioned by the participants in sharing their encounters of linguistic bias: the first author is an Asian (non-white) migrant in Australia and a non-native English speaker who acquired English as a second language, while the second author is a white person of mixed ethnic origin born in Australia and a native English speaker who acquired English as one of his three mother tongues. This allowed us to reflect on our own linguistic and racial experiences to put ourselves not only in the participants’ shoes and share our empathies of what they went through, but also to critically comprehend issues beyond their words, to better explain how their English competence was biased due to their racial, linguistic, and/or residential background.
Findings
In the subsequent sections, we discuss how the participants made sense of their Self under the gaze of linguistic-bias perpetrators. While Taina and Sunila described their experiences of spoken-English bias and suggested that this bias was linked to their racial characteristics, Ting and Kaira related their stories of written-English bias and believed that this bias was associated with their English acquisition, non-native-English, and residential status.
Spoken-English Bias
Taina, in answering the question whether she had been in situations where people were impatient with the way she spoke, recalled an incident where she was assumed by a governmental service officer not to be able to speak English well because she was “not Caucasian.” Taina said: So I took my father to [a governmental service]. And I think as I approached the queue, um, this lady’s (the service officer) demeanor changed because the lady before us was a white, uh, Caucasian lady and she was happily speaking with this Caucasian lady. Then it was our turn and there wasn’t even a greeting. And I think because she saw that we’re not Caucasian, she probably assumed automatically that we don’t speak English. And, um, and then she’s like: “oh, translator services just wait.” And I said: “no, I don’t need a translator. I’m here to apply this, this, this for my father.” And she’s like: “oh.” So I think that the automatic assumption that we have a language issue is still quite prevalent in the community. So I’ll give you another example, right. I speak with the government on a daily basis because of my job, right. For the last 25 years, I’m always on the phone talking to the ATO (Australian Taxation Office). I have no issues with that. None whatsoever. Um, even with Medicare, etcetera, for my father, if it’s done over the phone, I have absolutely no issues in communicating what I want done and the outcome that I want to achieve. But the problem is when I go into the office, I . . . You know, you could say that I’m sensitive, but I don’t agree with that. I think it’s because of my appearance that they automatically assume that I need a translator.
In Taina’s consciousness, she was under the biased gaze of the governmental service officer who played the role of the Other in this case. Taina noted that the Other even did not wait until she uttered a word, but visually gazed at her physical appearance to presume she would need a translator. She could, thus, see that the Other’s biased gaze toward her English competence was mainly visual (rather than auditory). She started realizing that she was judged by the Other when she observed how the Other was “happily speaking” with another “white” “Caucasian” lady but did not even greet her. Taina seemed to be a “virtual stranger” to the officer and due to her racial (Asian) appearance, the officer “automatically” made an assumption that her English would be inadequate. Under the Other’s gaze, Taina perceived her devalued English-speaking Self associated with her “non-white,” “non-Caucasian” Self. She knew that her bodily characteristics dissociated her from the normative image of English speakers (Kubota et al., 2023) in the Other’s gaze. Taina might also think that she was experiencing a kind of “banal racism” as her English Self was not evaluated in reference to her English, but to her physical traits. The sight of Taina’s Asian face could, in addition, trigger the Other’s expectations of foreignness (Currier, 2022): She was a “marked” inhabitant in Australia and, therefore, did not belong to the English community. As the officer “thought aloud” her linguistic bias by suggesting to Taina that she wait for a translator, Taina was more clearly aware that the former added a negative meaning to her Self: an incapable English user. The officer, then, seemed to find it hard to accept that Taina’s English was very good, as manifested in how surprised she was at the way the latter spoke English (“oh”). The Other’s surprised reaction to Taina’s English signified her biased attitude toward “non-white,” “non-Caucasian” people’s English (Kubota et al., 2023), placing Taina in a position of an “unnormal” English speaker whose English proficiency did not “match” her racial appearance.
Taina did not agree which the negative feature added to her Self by the governmental service officer. She gazed back at the officer in arguing that “I don’t need a translator” and thereby disrupting the latter’s expected isomorphism between “Asian appearance” and “bad English” (Bailey et al., 2016). She wanted to reject the alienating look of the Other who held an “automatic assumption” about her “deficit” English. Taina wished to show herself as a capable English speaker with a lot of freedom in explaining to the interviewer that she “[spoke] with the government on a daily basis,” “[was] always on the phone talking to the ATO,” and “[had] have no issues with that.” She was not a foreigner—she had spoken English in Australia “for the last 25 years.” It is important to indicate here that Tania came to Australia when she was 5 years old, and her English was comparable to that of “white” “Caucasian” English speakers. For Taina, she should not be evaluated as being “sensitive,” as she had the right to “restore” the legitimate English Self which she expected to construct and be recognized for.
In line with the discussion on English bias and racial appearance, Sunila reported a situation when a colleague complimented that she spoke English “so fluently.” Sunila suggested that the colleague made this seemingly positive comment on her English by observing that she was a “brown person.” She related: So I work as a part-time educator. Hmm, so it’s a more of a white dominated field, you know, in [city name] it’s more like that. Yeah. So I just went one day to one of these interviews. And then um, I was selected. And then um, I was on trial and then I met this fellow, um, you know, uh, educator. And I was just talking with her and like, nothing, uh, you know, derogatory on surface level. Everything’s fine. She was just talking with me, and then she just made this random comment: “Oh, wow. You speak English so fluently. How come?” So I was like, you know, it’s nothing to be surprised about. I mean, anyone can speak any language if they, you know, learn it. It’s not something, you know, uh, to be surprised about. Absolutely, I don’t think it was made out of very pure intentions. Um, yeah. Thinking about that, I personally feel like it’s an instance where, you know, they showed that superior mentality. You know, that’s how I thought about it [. . .]. They make it like, um, when I think whenever they see a brown person or, you know, a person of an African origin, you know, they assume that you don’t speak English. Um, so, yeah. So I think it shouldn’t be the case. Like, anyone can have access to language. And language is just something, a tool of communication, nothing else.
Discussing the colleague’s comment, Sunila suggested that “brown” people like her were often assumed to be non(fluent) English speakers, and her fluent English therefore came across as surprising and anomalous (“oh wow”) (Freeman & Stewart, 2020). Sunila was, thus, shaped as an “unbelievably fluent” English speaker under the colleague’s—the Other’s biased gaze. Sunila might feel that the Other gazed at her skin color and hesitated in recognizing that her fluent English was truly part of who she was. “How come?” How could a “brown” person like her speak English that well? Sunila perceived that she was visually (“a brown person”) and auditorily (“so fluently”) gazed. She suggested that as the Other might refer to her skin color in judging her English (although the Other did not explicitly say that out), and that was why the latter was amazed at the way she spoke English. Describing the education sector as a “white dominated field,” she picked herself (“a brown person”) and another example (“a person of an African origin”) as representatives of the minority group in contrast with the dominated white group, to indicate that the Self which she had constructed—a colored fluent English speaker—was not the one which was seen to be “normal” in this environment. Sunila observed that the colleague’s backhanded praise brought a negative feature to her sense of Self as it could carry underlying messages about normality and belongingness. In terms of normality, such a comment might trigger Sunila’s perceptions about a conflicted Self where her race negatively affected her “unmarked” (i.e., White-sounding) English (Kubota et al., 2023). Regarding belongingness, in the image of a “brown” person speaking good English, as made by the Other, Sunila could feel she was excluded from the English-speaking education community, although she could have always hoped to be seen as part of this community (which was currently White-dominant), no matter what her skin color was or how fluently she spoke English.
Sunila did not want to be fixed in the image of a brown person speaking “unbelievably fluent” English. She also made the Other the object of her gaze in arguing against the way the latter commented on her English: “it’s nothing to be surprised about.” She judged the colleague as the “knowledge-limited” Other who did not understand that it “shouldn’t be the case” that all people of color could not speak good English, because “anyone can have access to language.” She thereby pointed out the Other’s linguistic bias which was linked with the latter’s visual (people of color) and auditory (speaking English) gaze. Sunila, in addition, suggested that the Other’s seemingly friendly comment was not “made out of very pure intentions,” and it was not appreciated and was interpreted as a degradation by her. She questioned the genuineness of the Other’s praise, which might just be a sugar-coated form of a “superior mentality” that legitimized the Other’s authority as an entitled evaluator of English (Kubota et al., 2023) who wanted to alienate her as an abnormal English speaker in the white-dominant educational context.
Written-English Bias
Ting shared her experiences about how her English writing was evaluated by her work manager, who related her English skills to her English as a second language background (and probably to her non-native English and migration status). She said: So we had to write reports and so that is sort of like a written communication. And I made some mistakes. Like, those were some typos, um, in terms of the things that we typed down. But she would say something like: “I understand that English is not your first language, so it’s okay.” Like, I mean, so she would not expect that I get everything correct. But, but she said that because that is an official report. So we couldn’t have these mistakes but she’s so she’ll say sort of things like that. But when it comes to like domestic students whose first language is English and they were also like Australian, even though they are making the same types of mistakes, but she would never say things like that. She would just say like: “Um, they’re just a little bit typos in your report. So you’re going to fix that and submit that again.” I mean, like those are not like huge mistakes, like grammatical structure or like word use. It’s just typo. So I would think that she should have, she should have approached me the same way. Like they’re just a little bit typo. She doesn’t have to like it’s not necessary for her to also mention that: “Oh, I understand English is not your first language” [. . .]. Maybe she would expect me to make that to make some mistakes. But then, but to me, like that kind of mistakes is something that’s either English speaker like English first language speaker or non-native English speaker would both make. So even though she had that expectation with me and I think that is natural, but she doesn’t have to like say that out or just to direct that to me.
Ting was dealing with her work supervisor as the Other and the latter’s linguistic bias. This bias was shown in the way the Other repeated to Ting that English was not her first language so her writing was not good, and attempted to link Ting’s English writing competence to her English acquisition background. In the eyes of the supervisor who gazed at Ting’s written English, Ting made mistakes in her report because she did not have the “innate” writing ability of native English writers. Ting could perceive that she was shaped as an English as a second language writer producing substandard English texts. The Other’s biased gaze came with such an irrational connection between her English writing and her language background, that it risked becoming a burden on Ting during her placement, as she could feel that no matter how she invested in the work and the report, her written English would still be unfairly scrutinized. This was an unfair stereotype because, as she observed, domestic and Australian students whose “first language is English” often made similar mistakes but did not receive similar comments from the supervisor. Ting realized that she was alienated: she was an international, not “domestic,” a migrant, not “Australian,” an English as a second language, not English as a first language writer, and she was not part of that last group. Whatever the issues in the writing she was responsible for, that was because English was not her first language. Whatever issues in the writing that domestic Australian students made, that was because they were just “a little bit typos.” Ting knew that. She was a foreigner or an alien, and aliens should not be treated the same as fellow Australians. Aliens’ writing needed to be more strictly examined and corrected because they could not possess the same good English writing skills as native speaker locals. Aliens should always be aware of their disadvantageous “non-English” background and their “default” ability to make mistakes.
Ting gazed back at the Other as she could see the latter’s bias: “she would not expect that I get everything correct.” The Other sounded sympathetic and friendly (“I understand that . . .” or “it’s okay”), but her seeming sympathy and friendliness could just be being utilized to cover a didactic and judgmental tone underlying her evaluations (Liddicoat, 2016) on a second language English writer’s production. Ting wanted to reject the validity of the Other’s comments which linked her English mistakes with her language acquisition background. She normalized her English writing status and observed that the mistakes in her reports were common, as either “English first language speaker or non-native English speaker” could make “that kind of mistake.” In suggesting that “[the supervisor] doesn’t have to like say that out,” Ting recast the Other as non-understanding and inconsiderate, as the Other just tried to show her superior English status by negatively gazing at an alien’s English writing quality.
Following along the same lines, Kaira shared her experience of written-English bias in an Australian university. She revealed that before she came to Australia for her doctoral studies, she had done her undergraduate and Master’s studies in India, where she received excellent comments about her English writing from her former supervisors, and that before undertaking her PhD, she published research papers in “good journals.” In Australia, however, one of her PhD advisors often said to her that because English was not her first language, and because she was not a native English speaker, she would have difficulties in writing. Kaira recounted: There was this chance to write my first candidature report. And I wrote some things and I received minimal supervision throughout for things and then still I wrote a report and submitted it. And I was called by my supervisory panel. There was one main person, native and Australian in there, uh, making this a very harsh yet very mild comment. That is, you know, this their first thing was, uh, “look, Kaira, I know, um, I know English is not your first language. Uh, you are not a native English speaker, So, uh, so we are, we are going to have to do a lot of work about it. So don’t take . . . but will still have to give you my criticism. I will try to be as nice as possible, but please don’t take it by heart. But because your English is not your first language, it’s going to be a tough ride anyway.” [. . .]. I’m trying to just put something together to get their, um, to get their view on how the work looks like, how the results are or what should, what is more that can be done to make these results stronger or is my experimental design is good or not. I think it is the job of a supervisor. That’s what a supervisor is supposed to do and help you in that. Of course, English is very. . . but not that you just got offended with the way I have written it and you just keep writing everything about English [. . .]. Then maybe this is all they can do. That’s why they’re doing it like this to me. But I don’t know why people do it. And also the main person, it has always been the same, that “oh your writing is not, it’s not strong. You can’t write very well.”
Kaira made sense of her “struggling” or “weak” English writing Self under the biased gaze of the “native and Australian” supervisor. Because of her non-native English, she was assumed to find it “tough” when writing. She understood that in the eyes of the Other, because of such a background, her English writing should be categorized as below what might be “expected.” The Other showed her: “Look at yourself, are you aware of your disadvantageous English status?” That was why you should find the PhD writing a ‘tough ride,’ and that was why you ‘can’t write very well’.” In Kaira’s consciousness perhaps, characteristics such as “not a native” or “not your first language” were used by the Other to create a category which fixed her English writing competence in a superficially predefined way. She could perceive that the Other’s attitudes toward her English marked a type of group membership, that distinguished her from “native” and “Australian” English writers who are assumed to hold an innate high-level ability in writing English. It was suggested to her that she accept criticisms about her writing, not to “take it by heart,” and to accept being that kind of English learner Self as observed by the Other. As a result of experiencing unease or feelings of being patronized and undermined at having her PhD reports unfairly judged (Kubota et al., 2023), Kaira appeared to suffer from the representation constructed by the Other (Jefferson, 2024), as her freedom to write English was altered by the strong intervention from the latter. The Other’s implied tacit standards of native/Australian written English could, in addition, negatively impact on Kaira’s learning and academic Self in a university setting where native/Australian people’s ways of writing are typically seen to be the norm.
Kaira argued strongly back at the Other’s biased comments on her English writing Self. She indicated that the Other unnecessarily emphasized her language and background while overlooking important issues in her PhD work such as the results or the experimental design, and thus did not perform the role of a PhD advisor appropriately. She observed that the Other was seemingly supportive (“I will try to be as nice as possible”) but was actually not, as their “harsh yet very mild comment” made her confused about her writing ability and did not help her much in progressing her PhD project. Kaira showed her struggle to “recover” her vulnerable Self and her English writing freedom against the alienating gaze of the Other (P. Sharma & Barua, 2017). She wanted to “restore” the positive English writing Self which she had in the past. It may be worth noting here that Kaira experienced linguistic bias with a “struggling” English writing Self imposed on her in an unequal power relationship. She might thus not be able to explicitly express her objections against the supervisor’s didactic voice about her English competence and her PhD work.
Discussion
We have depicted the participants’ “Other mediated Self-experience” (Zahavi, 2012), where they made sense of their Self as they encountered spoken-English or written-English bias. In the Other’s gaze, they might/should not be able to speak or write English well because of their social background. They were shaped as “incompetent” or “unbelievably competent” English speakers/writers who were forced into predetermined categories of race, language, or residency status (Kubota et al., 2023). The participants, however, did not want to accept the negative dimensions about their Self as imposed by the Other. They gazed back at the Other to suggest that “I am different from the way the Other sees me.”
We further argue that the participants’ sense of Self before the Other is relevant not only to the notion of personal Self/Other which is about one’s awareness of who one/someone is as an individual, but also to the broader image of social Self/Other which is related to one’s consciousness about which social groups one/someone affiliates with, that is, the idea of in/exclusion and (non)belonging. In the context of linguistic bias, the participants became the social Other (i.e., an outsider of the English-speaking community) in the eyes and ears of the bias perpetrators who represented/supported the social Self (i.e., an insider of the English-speaking community). The participants who were seen as the social Other were representatives of migrants whose English is an LX, while those who were considered as the social Self were often local Australians whose English is native. The bias perpetrators’ implied acts of exclusion and in-built othering (Anderson, 2021) were either explicit (suggesting that the participants needed a translator or stating that the participants’ English was not good) or “innocent” (complimenting the participants for speaking English “so fluently”). The bias perpetrators’ linguistic evaluation could, in addition, be seen as a covert way of showing their dominance and superiority in questioning the social Other’s entitlement, authenticity and legitimacy and determining whether that person should be accepted into the social Self’s linguistic group (Harrison, 2009; Zhu & Li, 2016), or presenting the latter as “misplaced” in Australian English-speaking society. Dealing with the linguistic bias, the participants could experience feelings of exclusion and non-belonging due to their Asianness/brownness, non-nativeness, non-Englishness, or foreignness as they faced skepticism or denial of their English ability, which put them on “the other side” of the English language. They could sense that they were aliens who tried to enter a risky order of discourses about English and were likely to break rules of “normative” spoken/written English (Ezzaher, 2012).
“Good English” or “bad English” is, in addition, not often about the language itself alone but has to do with issues in a larger social structure (Peterson, 2020). The belief that good/standard English is synonymous with only white/native/L1/local English users, as encountered by our participants, can be linked to the knowledge that predominantly white/native English-speaking nations such as Australia, the United States, or the United Kingdom are the traditional homeland of “correct” English (Ramjattan, 2022). Thus, although people may understand that speakers with good/standard or bad/nonstandard English competence can come from an array of racial, linguistic, or residential backgrounds, the way they collectively imagine such speakers is often guided by a biased assumption that suggests they pair some “types” of English with some “categories” of people by default (Ramjattan, 2026). This ideologically creates and divides what Kubota et al. (2023) call two hegemonic “boxes” that function as the norms with which all residents in English-dominant nations are expected to comply. The first “higher” box which contains good/standard/legitimate English is occupied only by white, local, native, L1 English users, and the second “lower” box which contains bad/substandard/illegitimate English is for non-white, foreign, non-native, LX English users. For many bias holders, it is not usual that “items” and features from the two boxes are “mixed up,” although there is a common expectation that those who belong to the second box should make an effort to adapt to the “brand” of English used by people in the first box. The bias perpetrators who were mentioned by our participants seemed to belong to (or at least, aligned with people in) the first box. If the perpetrators had the same social background as the participants, the latter might not have perceived the former’s biased comments backhandedly or negatively in terms of race, language, or residency status (cf. Mujica & Bridges, 2023). This form of linguistic bias, moreover, typically targets non-white/foreign/non-native/LX English users who are from the second box. Critically, while it may be the case that people in the first box can also experience linguistic bias, it is unlikely that a white person who is believed to be a “native,” “local” English speaker receives comments such as “your English is good/bad” (cf. H. J. Kim, 2020). As people of the first box rarely encounter such a situation where their English proficiency is questioned and their English Self is degraded, they may comfortably and uncritically claim authority over others’ linguistic production and place themselves in the position of a “custodian” of good, standard or legitimate English (Liddicoat, 2016). Native English speakers’ linguistic authority may draw on their colonizing mind (Nguyen & Hamid, 2025) and their historically developed habitus (Liddicoat, 2016) as they have been long immersed in a social structure which still retains not only a monolingual mindset where only English is seen to be acceptable, but also a “mono-English” mindset where only one (or few) certain variety of English is seen to be legitimate (Nguyen & Makoni, in press). Due to such a mindset, people often believe that all those residing in an English-dominant territory should adopt a common good/standard English for the benefit of themselves and others, or the ills of Babel will fall upon them (Barros, 2019).
Conclusion
In this study, we have described the migrants’ self-reported experiences of English bias in Australia, where they shared their own ways of “speaking the Self, speaking the Other.” They constructed their “being” and “not being” associated with their degraded English-speaking/writing Self, contrasted themselves with the English-speaking/writing Other, and highlighted their unequal relationship with the latter. The undesired representation as determined by the Other, then, became a battleground where the participants’ self-examination of their English abilities and being was constantly waged (Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018).
Linguistic bias, however, should not be seen as a one-off. When biased observations and comments are more common and become routine, they can compound to cause harm to bias encounterers, bias perpetrators, and to society as a whole (Freeman & Stewart, 2020). It is, for example, suggested in the Anti-Defamation League’s (2018) Pyramid of Hate that individual biases are small steps contributing to institutionalized discrimination which ultimately leads to social violence. Biases, stereotypes, and prejudices “will change nothing and will serve no one, but will succeed only in finding moral comfort in malaise” (Sartre, 1967, pp. xxiv–xxv). The idea that a particular form of English is associated with a certain type of English users, thus, needs to be critically examined and debated. Celebrating cultural diversity should therefore include celebrating not only linguistic diversity, but also diversity within one language. Accordingly, governments, policymakers, and every individual need to rethink the issues of bias and diversity in relation to language to orient their ideologies, policies, and practices toward building a more respectful, inclusive, and harmonious environment for all.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the editor of International Journal of Bilingualism, Ad Backus, and the reviewers for their time and their helpful feedback on the earlier versions of this article. We would like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council and the University of Melbourne (including the university’s Faculty of Arts and the School of Languages and Linguistics) for their financial sponsorship, which is an important support for the research project on which this article is based. Special thanks to Ambrin Hasnain and Xiaoyi Zhang for their assistance in conducting interviews and coding interview transcripts, of which some extracts are used in the present article.
Ethical Considerations
This study received ethical approval from the University of Melbourne’s Office of Research Ethics and Integrity (approval 2023-26478-40393-3) on May 15, 2023. Participants gave written consent and/or signature before or after the interview.
Author Contributions
The first author, Trang Thi Thuy Nguyen, received research funding, led the project, conducted some data collection and analysis, developed the concept, design, and methods, and prepared the first and final drafts of the article. The second author, John Hajek, conducted some data analysis, made a significant contribution to the concept, and revised all drafts of the article critically for important intellectual content.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (grant number: DE230101209) and the University of Melbourne (including the university’s Faculty of Arts and the School of Languages and Linguistics).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to ethical reasons, as participants were assured that raw data would remain confidential and would not be shared.