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I mean, there’s a solid case to be made that language discrimination isn’t generally as dire as other kinds of prejudice, but it worries me just how socially acceptable it is and how little people are aware of the problem. We are far from a postracial society, but most racists have at least realized that they can’t voice their opinions in public without being loudly condemned as intolerant. Homophobia is probably more mainstream today, but even still, anyone who hates gay people in this day and age has to know that there are many people out there who accept homosexuality as a perfectly valid orientation/lifestyle/etc.

With language, though, the most common position to take is that there is only one acceptable possibility, and that all other variants are a case of someone Doing It Wrong. And it’s very easy to dismiss people as irrelevant, or to act on your less acceptable biases against particular groups, if you’ve been able to convince yourself that they don’t have an acceptable language. It’s easily internalized too, to the point where many people believe their own language to be faulty, and therefore that they are less deserving of some things — and that just breaks my heart!

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6. whateverexplorer said: relavent.
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