About

Sonja Lanehart is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. Her scholarship focuses on language in African American communities, language and identity, sociolinguistics and language variation, and African American education. She approaches these topics from Black feminist, Intersectional, and Critical Race Theory perspectives. She is particularly interested in pushing the boundaries of linguistic research to be more diverse and inclusive. Lanehart is a strong advocate for mentoring and sponsoring emerging Scholars of Color, as well as promoting anti-racism, social justice, equity, and inclusion. She was named a Linguistic Society of America Fellow in 2021. Her latest book is 'Language in African American Communities' published by Routledge in 2023.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Media studies
• Linguistics
• Gender studies
• Political Science
• Philosophy
• Law
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• The Struggle is Real Every Single Day

  American Speech · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Sociology
  • Linguistics

  Research Article| May 01 2021 The Struggle is Real Every Single Day: Doing Black Linguistic Consciousness Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, By Baker-Bell, April, New York: Routledge, 2020. Pp. xx + 128. ISBN 978-1-138-55101-5$160 (pbk $44.95, ebk $44.95) Sonja Lanehart Sonja Lanehart University of Arizona Sonja Lanehart is professor of linguistics; teaching, learning, and sociocultural studies; and Africana studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she teaches courses in sociolinguistics, critical race theory, African American Language, language and identity, and #BlackLivesMatter. Her research focuses on those same areas of teaching. Email: lanehart@arizona.edu. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Speech (2021) 96 (2): 286–292. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-9142460 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Sonja Lanehart; The Struggle is Real Every Single Day: Doing Black Linguistic Consciousness. American Speech 1 May 2021; 96 (2): 286–292. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-9142460 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Dialect SocietyAmerican Speech Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2021 by the American Dialect Society2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  DOI

• Say my name

  Gender and Language · 2021 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Gender studies

  This essay is a call out and a roll call of Black women scholars – Black Feminists, Critical Race Theorists, Intersectionality Theorists and co-conspirators – doing the work of the elder women and ancestors whose shoulders we stand on. I frame the research on African American Women’s Language around Hull, Bell-Scott and Smith’s (1982) seminal book All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave to shout out not only how language and linguistics researchers got it twisted and need to reckon with truth and say my (language’s) name: African American Women’s Language. And put some respeck on it while you’re at it.

  DOI

• Linguistics in pursuit of justice. By John Baugh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. viii, 215. ISBN 9781107153455. $110 (Hb).

  Language · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Reviewed by: Linguistics in pursuit of justice by John Baugh Sonja Lanehart Linguistics in pursuit of justice. By John Baugh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. viii, 215. ISBN 9781107153455. $110 (Hb). I have read all of John Baugh’s books. He is a brilliant writer and thinker. I admire him and his work. However, of all of his publications, this one has had an emotional impact because it seems to be so personal. I was moved by this book in a way I have not been by his others. It is not because he starts with a personal story or reflection—most of his work does that. I think it is because this book hits home for him and for so many of us who are victimized because of the color of our skin and the history of racism and injustice in America—and because we have Black children. That is a scary thing in the world today with the reemergence of unabashed and unchecked White nationalism. The case has been made by many scholars that linguistic discrimination is about not the language but rather the people, so this further supports what critical race theory scholarship has already affirmed: racial injustice is embedded in the very fabric of our society—including its laws and legal system. As such, it is business as usual but it is also very personal. Read the preface of Linguistics in pursuit of justice (LPJ). In it, B lays the foundation for more than twenty years of his work and life. LPJ is a compilation of what may be seen by some as the behind-the-scenes work that B engaged in. Instead, it really is the work he has been doing. I tell my students to do what matters to them and what brings them joy and purpose. I advise them to pursue a thesis or dissertation topic that personally matters to them, because that is what will see them through to the end. In order to sustain themselves, what they do must matter to them. Otherwise, either they will sicken of it and not do it justice, or it will get the better of them and they will need to abandon it. LPJ reveals a life’s work of purpose that starts from the very first page. Read on. Ch. 1 lays the sociocultural and historical foundation for B’s journey. While we may have thought Black street speech (Baugh 1983) was the beginning, it was really his being a Black person in a racialized space and understanding that experience even better once he went to college at Temple University in 1970. B says that LPJ ‘explores various ways in which alternative forms of linguistic experimentation and evaluation could advance human equality throughout the world. Yes, the goal is ambitious, but it is commensurate with the urgent need to enlist linguistic tools in support of unique and collective efforts to enhance the human condition worldwide’ (1). We should all try to do as much. The pictures alone in Ch. 1 are convincing enough. I did not know the history of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, but I do know how it has been represented as a terrorist organization in American history—but not my history. Like B, I saw the good the Black Panther Party did in my community during my summers as a child in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They fed us every day. They loved us—Black people in poor communities that White society and schooling wanted to leave behind. Unfortunately, as B clearly shows us, being Black and proud in America is equated with terrorism and cause for alarm by White society. If you do not know the history, LPJ provides a great introduction. Ch. 2, ‘Linguistics, life, and death’, follows with a good introduction to the accidental birth of forensic linguistics by Roger Shuy in 1979 and shows why maybe we should talk to people sitting next to us on the airplane. Being from Texas, I was familiar with the Cullen Davis case and the legendary attorney Racehorse Haynes. (It helped that they made a television movie about the murder and that my mom always insists on...

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jennifer Bloomquist

  50 shared

• Lisa J. Green

  32 shared

• Lisa J. Green

  11 shared

• Paul A. Schutz

  University of Arizona

  5 shared

• Lisa J. Green

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  3 shared

• Tracey L. Weldon

  2 shared

• Walt Wolfram

  2 shared

• John R. Rickford

  American Academy of Arts and Sciences

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Linguistic Society of America Fellow (2021)

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