Christopher Columbus' mistaken belief that the inhabitants of the island of Canibales engaged in the consumption of human flesh popularized the term "cannibal.
"[7]: 311 This term not only supplanted "anthropophagy" in reference to consuming human flesh but embodied the construct of the other and became the ultimate personification of an antithetical to a "civilized," normative existence.
[7]: 312 The emergence of race included the social creation of hierarchies that positioned white Europeans at its top, with other racialized groups such as Black Africans and Australian Aborigenés at the bottom.
In recording and studying Indigenous languages for the aim of conversion, Missionaries created linguistic hierarchies based on written and oral knowledge.
[9]: 39 The late nineteenth century was characterized by the advent of industrial capitalism, which saw the increase in immigration from Eastern and Southern Europeans as well as the internal migration of African Americans seeking a better life in the Northern states.
In 1859, On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was published, which influenced key debates and arguments surrounding colonialism, capitalism, and the ideas of evolution and eugenics.
This technique sought to identify certain language groups and, by extension, their speakers as a representation of an early, primitive stage of evolution while others as more advanced and civilized.
[10]: 59 Later in the early twentieth century, Franz Boas and his students, especially Edward Sapir, challenged evolutionary theory and the comparative method, instead proposing historical particularism as an alternative to how languages and societies are studied.
[10]: 60 Edward Sapir, with his student Benjamin Whorf, developed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and contributed to the discussions of how language influences the perception of one's reality, which is defined as linguistic relativity.
Personally mediated racism may take the form of microaggressions, which often manifest negative connotations regarding an individual's or group's speech patterns or linguistic expressions in a demeaning manner.
The everyday biases that define microaggressions are exemplified in statements that claim someone talks like or sounds like a specific cultural or racial group (Indian, Black, White, Mexican, etc.
)[17]: 383 Examples of microaggressions also include derogatory remarks about someone's intelligence based on their manner of speaking, suggesting unwarranted assumptions about someone's cultural identity and linguistic homogeneity within racial or ethnic groups.
[20]: 169 For example, Black people may use a standard linguistic dialect when interacting with police officers to convey a higher social status and attempt to mitigate the effects of racial profiling.
It can occur in everyday conversation but also in the media and advertisements, in which certain dialects and their associated stereotypes are utilized to represent socially desirable qualities attributed to that language.
[25]: 683 The works of Jane H. Hill on "mock Spanish,"[26] of Barbara A. Meek on "Hollywood Injun English",[27] of Ronkin and Kan on parodies of Ebonics,[28] of Elaine Chun "Ideologies of Legitimate Mockery" on "mock Asian," etc., demonstrate how parodying or re-appropriating non-English languages contributes to presenting certain cultures as inferior to European Americans by disparaging their languages.