Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
Linguistic profiling and other forms of linguistic discrimination were first attested in the Old Testament. The coinage of the word shibboleth traces its origin to the Book of Judges 12:6, where the inability to pronounce that word correctly would result in death; “They told him, ‘Please say shibboleth.’ If he said, ‘sibboleth,’ because he could not pronounce it correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan.” Since then, other manifestations of human conflict and discrimination frequently exhibit linguistic demarcation in one form or another, and these shibboleths evolve over time. Warring factions may eventually make peace, as old rivalries come to be displaced or resolved. Advances in technology exacerbated these trends, as more-rapid modes of transportation increased contact and conflict among speakers of mutually unintelligible languages, accompanied by the development of increasingly efficient deadly weaponry that coincided with global expansionism along with sporadic conquests and the ensuing oppression of human enclaves throughout the world. The advent of global markets and multinational immigration has further accelerated circumstances where diverse human factions may use linguistic (dis)similarities as one of several means through which individuals formulate perceptual boundaries between groups that are familiar or unfamiliar. When compared to the historical longevity of discrimination based on language, linguistic evaluations of this phenomenon are relatively recent.