Decolonizing Theory Reveals Psycholinguistic Injustice in the Field of Speech/Language Pathology

Subfields of Speech/Language Pathology (S/LP) in the Philippines and around the world are undermined by social notions of normality. Language ideologies of normality undermine developmental language assessment contexts that concern the diagnosis of Developmental Language Disorder relative to developmental language norms. Using my decolonizing theory that isin coalition with Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013) and Crip Linguistics (Henner & Robinson, 2023), I reveal how these ideologies facilitate ableist and racist social processes that lead to psycholinguistic injustice. Psycholinguistic injustice can manifest as monolingualism, monomodalism, and oppressive notions of language disorder. Confronting psycholinguistic injustice entails honoring indigenous roots and reclaiming the languaging that was erased by colonization. By confronting psycholinguistic injustice, speech/language pathologists can figure out how to support the legitimacy of multilingual and multimodal languaging development. By resisting psycholinguistic injustice in the field of S/LP, humanizing theories, research, and practices that fundamentally place racial and disability justice can be developed. I conclude with my hopes for what psycholinguistic justice can be.