John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences, professor of anthropology, professor of education, professor of psychological & brain sciences, and professor of English, specializes in interdisciplinary research in linguistics focused on linguistic discrimination. His studies have covered linguistic discrimination faced by those who speak dialects, sound like they belong to a racial or cultural minority, are deaf or foreign-language speakers.
This book is the culmination of his studies and an explanation of what initially drew him to the topic. Growing up in inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, Baugh saw correlations between race and language that he devoted much of his career to exploring and expanding upon.