In the field of language studies, injustice, broadly defined as inequity in the understanding and treatment of language forms, practices, and users, has long been scrutinized by scholars. In this exploratory presentation, I will discuss three fronts that are intertwined–(i) the intellectual front, (ii) the activist front, and (iii) the everyday practice front–and highlight the plurality of critical responses to injustice, different manifestations of praxis (i.e., critical reflection and action for transformation–Freire, 1998), and quandaries. On the intellectual front, scholars have problematized and debated on linguistic injustice. While conceptual debates can advance scholarly knowledge, they may divert our attention to the core problem and praxis to be exercised in the real world. On the
activist front, an example of a call for boycotting a conference in Texas raises a question of who would benefit from doing so and who might be oppressed by it. On the everyday practice front, I ask “How do we practice what we advocate?” “How can we overcome our complicity with coloniality?” While unethical acts should be condemned, more difficult questions are how we can hold ourselves accountable when we advocate for justice, what obstacles minoritized advocates face, whether we should approach from a liberal egalitarian integrationist stance or an anticolonial radical stance, and how situated ethics (Pennycook, 2021) can be actually enacted. Overall, an engagement with justice-affirming discourses is confronted by neoliberalism that we have to negotiate. This circumstance requires strategies for enacting greater praxis and building allyship and solidarity across differences (Sister Scholars, 2023).