2057V - Bilingualism at the Intersection of Race, Disability, and Subalternity

This session is developed by, and presenters invited by, Equity and Cultural-Linguistic Diversity. This seminar interrogates how research addressing bi/multilingualism and disability in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) invisibilize the effects of racism and racialization. Anchored from a positivist tradition of knowledge production, research on bilingualism in CSD upholds methodologies that are uncritical of power and oppression. This has resulted in creation of evidence base that undermines the subjective experiences of the racialized bilingual families. This seminar will present narratives from families of racialized children with language disability. The narratives would reveal how construction of researcher/clinician as the sole experts is based on reductive frameworks. The seminar will advocate to center racialized families as the source of both subjective and objective knowledge and experts providing complex understanding of bilingualism, race and disability.