After reading Stoever, I do have one objection. On the one hand, I do believe that the sonic color line bears worth mentioning. I also acknowledge the role of language, as language and society are synonymous. However, Stoever wasn’t fully correct. When she claims that the “inaudibility of whiteness stems from its considerably wider palette of representation,” she wrongly assumes whiteness to be homogenous. Across the globe, linguistic minorities of all skin colors – white included – must fight to ensure their society lives on in the face of the global sound dynamics of languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese. I saw this in Rihanna’s use of Jamaican patois, which is a linguistic minority. There are about seven thousand languages alive today, and nearly half are fighting for survival. This issue of linguistic minorities and language death are particularly potent to me, as I am one of a quickly shrinking number who can speak my ethnic language of Irish Gaelic. While Stoever’s point about the sonic color line is an important one, I object on the basis that this problem goes far beyond race. My question is this; can we have a dialogue about language and language death before it’s too late?
