In the time since the term “intersectionality” was first introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the term has gained a measure of widespread, even viral popularity. Increasingly, psycholinguists are citing this concept to promote work which more fully engages with the consequences of human diversity for language processing. This piece discusses the ways in which “intersectionality” has thus far been engaged by the field of psycholinguistics. I argue that the common usage of the term “intersectionality” is notably out of step with the tradition of Black feminist scholarship from which it derives. Originally defined as an analytical framework for examining the effect of interlocking oppressions in erasing the distinctive experiences of multiply marginalized people, intersectionality should not be invoked without any serious and specific discussion of oppressive systems or erasure. To achieve a more just and equitable applied psycholinguistics and authentically promote intersectional approaches to understanding language behavior, intersectionality must be taken as a framework primarily engaging with effects of structural violence. The article concludes with some guidelines for readers to assist in distinguishing “intersectional” claims which perform erasure from those which reflect the original and intended anti-misogynoir applications of the theory.

Recent studies have demonstrated incontrovertibly that person perception influences language perception. Much of this research is predicated on the notion that social categories are stable constructs that are perceived similarly by members of various speech communities. Power differentials necessarily impact the legibility of the social performances circumscribed by macrosociological categories and thus bely any claim to objectivity in these categorization systems. Developing a more just applied psycholinguistics requires researchers to explicitly consider the role of power in language, how power shapes fields’ notions of what research questions are important and meaningful, and therefore how research data are collected, analyzed, and disseminated. We argue that psycholinguists should widely adopt approaches to studying linguistic processing in ways which acknowledge the role of social ideologies in shaping their outcome, and which reckon with how asymmetrical power relations shape the perception, acquisition, and judgment of both social and linguistic variation. We conclude with a series of guidelines intended to promote characterizations of social and linguistic diversity which accurately reflect the importance of power differentials and which engage ethically with sociopolitical goals of justice and equity.