Linguistic Racism in Social Media A Study of Young Adult Kurdish Speakers’ Experiences in Virtual Media

The current study sought to understand the experience of Kurdish speakers being linguistically discriminated in the Iranian diverse linguistic context through the investigation of participants‘ reactions and ideas. This study was conducted on some virtual forums in Iran in which, people engage in activities mainly with their peers. Constructivist GT was chosen because the purpose of this method is to describe the problem from the participant's point of view and interpret the participant's understanding of subjective experiences (Charmaz, ۲۰۱۴). Individual interviews were conducted to provide a deeper study of the potential for linguistic racism in the Iranian community. Interviews were carried out using a subject guide based on literature. A wide range of topics including a) participants' general social media experience; b) personal experience of communicating in social networks; c) experience of participating in the general virtual atmosphere; and d) active interaction with other minorities, admin-users, and other members. In this study, the author explored how minority language speakers perceive discrimination and how the communication experiences they identify are related to their minority status. Participants regularly faced unwanted treatment in their interactions with members, subscribers, and administrators regarding their language, name, religion, or cultural background.

Keywords:

linguicism , social media , minority languages , Kurdish language , hate speech