In efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion on campus, the NC State University Libraries and the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity have partnered to design a curated list of resources, which includes a variety of podcasts, articles and books based on a different topic every month.
The topic for this month’s list is “Linguistic Diversity” and features works of NC State researcher and William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor Walt Wolfram.
Wolfram, who has been researching dialect diversity since 1965 when he was a graduate student, said the promotion of linguistic diversity is important as dialects are often socially stigmatized — especially within education.
“In American society, if you don’t talk standardized American English, you’re looked down on,” Wolfram said. “You’re considered to be not equal, and so there’s a real issue of inequality. So my mission, in terms of NC State’s mission, is to change that narrative.”
Wolfram also said that NC State is a leading institution in the promotion of language diversity through courses, research development and other activities.
“It’s become part of our educational mission to make linguistic diversity known and appreciated throughout the United States,” Wolfram said. “And actually, in that sense, NC State has the most prominent diversity program of any university in the United States.”
This list of resources, curated by Becky Cibulskis, international program coordinator, and Darby Orcutt, assistant head of Collections and Research Strategy, are part of the University’s efforts to create a culture of diversity and inclusion on campus.
“We were invited to give resources for supporting international populations, but that’s a really big group,” Cibulskis said. “We’re representing thousands of students and staff and faculty on campus that are coming from really different contexts, and so we’re hoping that we’re going to be able to do a series of different DIY/DEI related to the international experience.”
Wolfram said in terms of diversity, language is never talked about. Cibulskis said exploring it through practical tools, such as books and audiovisual products, is helpful for both staff and students to understand and improve linguistic diversity on campus.
“I think that for me it has been really helpful because it does present like new aspects of inclusion that we don’t always think about at the institution,” Cibulskis said. “We have hope that somebody who is new to the topic of linguistic diversity, and quickly finds themselves here … it’s still overwhelming, it’s still a couple of dozen resources. But I think having multiple modalities, like here’s an academic research paper, here’s a podcast, here’s a YouTube video, really lets the user kind of interact with the topic in a way that makes the most sense for them.”
It took Cibulskis and Orcutt about two to three months to curate this month’s list, which provides accessibility to explore a global concept.
“I was really looking at linguistic diversity globally and then like, ‘Oh, my God, we have an actual scholar expert on campus that has all of these resources and is already engaging student groups,’” Cibulskis said. “I think it really just kind of helps connect what seemed like a really big topic to things that are super relevant to our own community.”
This month’s list of resources can be found on NC State Libraries’ website.
