Editing Prejudice (section)

===Linguistic discrimination===
{{Main article|Linguistic discrimination}}

Individuals or groups may be treated unfairly based solely on their use of language. This use of language may include the individual's [[native language]] or other characteristics of the person's speech, such as an [[accent (sociolinguistics)|accent]] or [[dialect]], the size of [[vocabulary]] (whether the person uses complex and varied words), and [[syntax]]. It may also involve a person's ability or inability to use one language instead of another. {{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}

In the mid-1980s, [[linguistics|linguist]] [[Tove Skutnabb-Kangas]] captured this idea of discrimination based on language as the concept of linguicism. Kangas defined linguicism as the ideologies and structures used to "legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language".<ref>Quoted in Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove, and Phillipson, Robert, {{"'}}Mother Tongue': The Theoretical and Sociopolitical Construction of a Concept". In Ammon, Ulrich (ed.) (1989), ''Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties'', p. 455. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co. {{ISBN|3-11-011299-X}}.</ref>