The Englitch Research Proposal
English Design Bias and Supplements to Improve the Language Art of Peace
Master of Science in Social Enterprise & Innovation via Nonprofit Leadership Program
By: Paxen-Athene Landyback
University of Denver - College of Professional Studies
June 2025
Abstract
Subconscious microaggressions (Haseltine 2025) established through language formats can hinder moral balance within our species by affecting our cognitions in a way that distracts us from formulating ethical communication patterns that encourage peace. This study surveys a stratified population of 400+ English speakers about their psychosocial perceptions and emotions upon learning from educational videos about English language history, global impact, and proposed techno-ethical shifts regarding its structure. The results are measured according to each educational presentation's survey responses in correlation with participant demographics. Further research seeks to enumerate the study of peace-making through subtle shifts within language-communication, artificial intelligence ethics, and psychosocial behavioral health.
Introduction
This study seeks to aid the comprehension of how current English formats prioritize certain psychosocial belief systems and cultural traits through its phonetic and semantic frequencies, as well as its program designs (Fischer, Scheepers, Myachykov 2023). We search for indicators of behavior dependent on subconscious formats within the language, by analyzing the participants’ psychosocial cognizance of English’s communication influences, and what happens to their cognition when presented facts about English history, it’s global position, and supplements to design bias. The presented edification intends to respectfully aim at a sequencing that integrates culturally respectful acknowledgments of local & global exchange, for future planetary design schematics that are more unified, and paradoxically decentralized, with “Cross-Linguistic-Capability;” an ever-evolving based on trends, ethical patterning system (Zhihong 2022).
“From the standpoint of linguistic anthropologists… only by studying variation can we identify similarities and differences to arrive at more robust generalizations and consider potential universals” (Chernela 2023). Professor of Black Feminist Law, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, invented the term “intersectionality,” so we can “describe the dynamic associations between the concepts of race, class, gender, and other individualized characteristics and their real-time interaction with one another in our society.” Crenshaw evolved the English language with a new word to explain a psychosocial and political situation. People of color have been inventing adaptations to evolve the Latin-based languages ever since they were forced to use them, making new words and language cultures, generating the diction of Ebonics, Chicano, and other forms, as well as popularizing the words of their ancestral languages.
Further, if we are expected to be created equal, then the merit within European and American studies is just as scholarly as the “knowledge assets” of any other ethnicity’s studies’ merits, without hiding the truth of exploitation, genocide, and slavery (Government of Canada 2024). This study hypothesizes that English currently has a supremacist and ethnocentric influence on both global and local cultures within the Americas and beyond, and that speakers and learners of English can change its format to become less harmfully-biased and more peaceful over time. Remedy suggestions include implementing ethical adjustments to both the language and its chronology, as well as promoting multilingualism, with the goal of an increased communicable clarity of experience in global and local exchange and peace. The study’s research question is:
How does the current English language art-design affect psychosocial cues after we educate participants on English history, format, and global positioning, and after we offer remedies to edify and substitute its tactical format to improve local and global peace?
Literature Review
The term “raciolinguistics,” invented in 2016, inspires this research to subtract harmful bias with innovative tact woven into the engagement of the ways we use language. Topics about how language and race affect each other, such as code-switching and transracial dialects, are a part of how language is a “social process re-made daily” by the participants using it (Alim et al. 2016). Each participant has the power to undo hurtful language patterns and create or engage in “antiracist” language tactics (Kendi 2019). We can learn to “break from the assimilationist politics of the past and a move toward abolitionist frameworks of the future” (Alim 2023).
Before raciolinguistics, there were scholars such as Benjamin Lee Atwood-Whorf, who studied the Hopi, Maya, and Chinese languages in comparison to Latin-based ones (especially English) and wrote about how their structures vary and thus their worldviews, as cultural root cause communication patterns that influence the way people think and act. Whorf was a mechanical engineer before he studied his passion of language design and cognition, as he often compared language to a social machine (Whorf 1956).
When cultural showdowns base themselves off religious, political, and ethnic assumptions, instead of “universal” patterns of truthful evidence that evolve our collective health, we get unnecessarily cognized away from our species common truth by greed, ignorance, and lies (Chernela 2023). If we focus on negotiating peaceful deals instead of genocidal lies, we will prevent intergenerational trauma and revenge. Languages change over time, as cultures of land-gauge influence each other. For example, there are many words from Native American Tribes that’ve become part of the American English language, such as “moccasins,” “cashews,” “guacamole,” “yankee,” “hurricane,” “persimmon,” “squash” and many more (Alt 2024), while this list has the potential to grow (Proof-Reading-Services 2021).
Another observation is that “white people” sometimes speak in Ebonic, Chicano and Indigenous vernaculars and engage colorful cultural communication patterns either by “appropriating” those cultures, or by having an “authentic art appreciation” of Black, Indigenous, and Chicano cultural communications (Petrov 2021). There are both harmful and helpful aspects to using a variety of cultural language formats to define what is normal in society, while this study seeks to define levels of discernment for this phenomenon. Since language is an amalgamation of how the land has been gauged over time, it proves the history of an inextricable process of creating collective communication patterns through both harmful enforcement and integrational peace.
This study seeks to prove cultural communication as an evolutionary adaption for peace, and to engage in a “restructuring and transformation of schools and society, which dismantles the foundations of white supremacy which schools are built on,” so we can change curriculum to reduce the discrimination upon racial vernaculars and co-create language. Further, these “new conceptualisations of language itself connects language struggles to broader networks of power, racial capitalism,” showing us how the foundation of language is connected to the root causes of our community-based thinking patterns and cognizance (Cushing 2022).
This process has also been titled “LangCrit,” a word invented by Allison Crump to explain the research of discerning language as a noun and “languaging” as a verb; to be critical of how language as action affects racial or gender loyalty and discrimination, in a spectrum of harm, defense, or celebration (Crump 2014). Henry Louis Gates Jr. (another early founder of raciolinguistic study), affirms that Latin-based languages, especially English, created the concept of race to further divide our collective evolution as a species. He explains “race” as a “metaphor,” and that it has “no essence as a thing in itself, apart from its creation by an act of language,” emphasizing how language is used as a sociopolitical tool to assign definitions and ideas to physical realities. This study seeks to understand how this process can unethically characterize collective cognition patterns depending on format use, and how we can improve the collective design.
Further, the study argues for a second language requirement in the United States, to promote and increase intelligence for global and local diplomacy and peace. In many other countries, English is taught as a required second language as per education policy (University of Winnipeg), so those countries can better negotiate sustainability for their people, considering that the U.S. is the world’s military pinnacle. The potential for “English-dominant” countries to attempt multi-lingual perspectives can boost peaceful cognizance, but they tend to consider it an economic set-back instead (Padilla 1991). The countries which require English as a second language do it for survival in the global economic trade- not simply because they want to exclusively know English in of itself, but because they need resources provided through the wealth and opportunity involved with having English-speaking freedom.
Finally, new technology is attempting to secure easier multilingualism and more ethical language use, such as teaching A.I. programs to help us with communication, promoting the creation of new words, integrating words from other cultures, having accessible translation services, and using blockchain software in multiple languages to increase investor trust, and keep multilingual receipts of transaction for a comprehensive explanation of economic debt between countries (Zhihong, Tan Yan 2022). This study seeks to educate participants on English history and its global control through subconscious and economic design, in attempt to reveal the consciousness that crafted its spellings, and offer remedial practices to shift the way English spell is casted, so war can be sought to mitigate climate change challenges (Phillips 2021) and achieve species’ planetary peace and healthy evolution for the sake of our future generations.
Methodology, Consent Factors and Risks
The study falls under a quasi-experimental, phenomenological case study, using both qualitative and quantitative data gathering, that will be processed through descriptive and inferential statistics to assert the findings. The systematic investigation shall remain true to respect its participants’ right to autonomy and protection, for the beneficence of language progress, researching innovative remedies for psychosocial health, improving artificial intelligence programs, and increasing local and global peace within communication exchange. The population being studied is English speakers, and the sample size will be at least 400. Participants shall be chosen through a stratified selection process.
A survey will be crafted and conducted via Qualtrics software that integrates videos, and it will take approximately 2 hours+ to complete. First, participants will be asked about their awareness, perception, and opinions about the English Language and its potential psychosocial effects in their lives by using a pre-survey. Then, they will be presented with several short educational videos on English History, its potential design biases, its global position, and remedies to its bias. After each video presentation, there will be a survey that will follow, measuring the participants’ perceptions, emotional experiences, and opinions regarding the presentation.
The questions will study the latter variables related to the participants’ psycho-social health statuses, and the potential influence that English constructs have on them, to see how their perspective on the English language changes (if it does) after each video presentation, and if they find the supplemental intervention concepts in the last presentation and survey as appealing remedies, or not, or if they perceive that they will have no effect. Questions will include both quantitative scales and qualitative text entries. Other variables to be analyzed in the study include how participants’ demographics correlate to their responses, such as their race/ethnicity, gender, economic status, religious and political preference, and if they are multilingual or not.
Confounding variables may include the participants emotional state prior to taking the survey, as they could be having a “bad day,” or the weather could be causing them dysthymia, which might affect their responses. Another confounding variable could be the demographic misinterpretation asserted by a participants’ racial perception, compared to their racial experience. For example, a visually dark skinned or “black” person could select “white” as their race, due to their perception, rather than their epidermal experience. Unfortunately, having met a census worker that came across an individual who did this for their “race” status choice in the census, proves that it has happened. This type of demographic issue could also happen with sex and gender identity and experiences if not clearly defined.
Also, due to the online format of the study, the participants could be distracted by whatever is around them in where they are taking the survey. To mitigate these possible confounding factors, there will be a clause for participants to read, asking that they identify their racial demographic based on their epidermal experience, and to select both their gender identity and sex identity (having transgender, transexual, non-binary and intersex selection options). We will also ask them to complete the survey at a time when they are feeling emotionally stable, as rested as possible, and comfortable enough to complete their participation in a quiet place with no distractions. If further confounding variables are discovered after submission, they will be noted and updated to the authority’s permission of this study as soon as possible.
It shall be disclosed to participants that the study may take several hours to complete, and that they may be exposed to new information that could affect their emotional experience, as the survey itself will be trying to measure those experiences, so that it may find changes within the participants’ psychosocial health and emotional perceptions. It shall be disclosed that the identifiable private information regarding the participants’ responses will not be shared publicly, while the goals and procedure of the study will be explained to them, so they may choose to proceed with informed consent. If a grant is awarded to conduct the study, participants would be compensated with a gift card for their valuable time and energy, while the offer of compensation may influence them to participate at a higher standard of quality, due to the promise of payment.
The probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort anticipated in this research will be similar to what’s ordinarily encountered in daily life, such as the performance of already established, routine psychological examinations or tests (National Archives 2018). However as noted latter, there is a potential risk that a slight increase of emotional distress upon participants learning new information may occur- but it shall not exceed to extreme levels of danger regarding participants’ health. Another risk includes the banning of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” materials and ideology by the Trump administration and some U.S. states. Although not exactly specified as “D.E.I. work,” this research effort is to further the beneficence of future trends in the sectors of communication and language, social psychology, education ethics, local and international relations, as well as the conflict and peace studies.
This study takes after the similar intent and statistical methodology conducted in Fischer, Scheepers, and Myachykov’s “More is Better: English Language Statistics are Biased Toward Addition” research analysis, such as using t-test and ANOVA calculations to study trends. Their study focused on how “language reflects cultural preoccupations not only via the overall frequencies of words, but also via how words pattern together with other words.” However, they analyzed word programs for their data samples, while this new research will add to their work by instead surveying human participants that review educational videos.
To process the data, a contracted firm shall calculate the statistics, and the findings will be presented in the study’s concluding report, including how the well the research question was answered, how the findings’ impact can be used, and how future researchers can build off the collected information for further investigation. Graphs of data and examples from participants will be used to explain the data visually, and by featuring quotes to enhance the visibility of the participant narratives. Finally, the goal of this study is to find connections between English and its speakers’ social psychology, to improve communication ethics structure, with a focus on cultivating global and local peace by changing language tactics and implementing accurate and safe artificial intelligence and translation programs.
Conclusion
This study is influenced by the author’s personal experience of psychosocial health issues related to their perception of several languages. In that, the hypothesis is predicted based on their personal experience and the literature they have put together, being that they have an emotional connection to the study, which can result in the possibility of bias within the video presentations that are crafted by them. The author tries to mitigate this by citing as many references to other works related to the research as possible, so that the presentations are not solely based on the author’s works, but on the research of many.
This proposal also does not have separated sections for the “Ethics and Risks” aside from the “Methodology” section and instead puts both sections together into one. The author could’ve more specifically outlined these sections separately. The author gives minimal information about the presentations and survey contents, as they only mention some basic presentation topics. The author intends to explain the surveys and presentations contents with more detail and clarity in future presentations and throughout the edification of this research proposal process.
A strength of this proposal is that there is a large amount of professional references to draw from and assert the prominence of the research topic. Another is the passion of the author to complete the research with thorough competence and patient consistency. Although the author does not have the sufficient ability to conduct the study’s statistical requirements, they do have grant-writing and reporting experience, so they may possibly be funded to hire a legitimate statistics firm that has experience with social-sciences research data, and so they could offer to compensate participants (not the author themself), of which would aid the quality of this study.
Another weakness is that the population of English speakers and learners is massive compared to the very small percentage of 400 people sampled in the research study, of whom are only American-based English speakers. Also, due to this study’s relation to “D.E.I.” types of content, it may not get funded in the near future- but could possibly be funded during the next American administration. The author tries to mitigate this issue by not using as many “banned words” as they can without losing necessary information (such as participant demographics and detailed narrative perceptions).
Finally, the author also puts themselves at risk for political targeting by proposing the study and by citing their own work in the study, wherein study participants could also potentially target the author through the study’s presentation citations and outreach email. Within the consent documents that explain the study to participants, the author plans to include rights and responsibilities that the participant has in the case of risk exposure. In conclusion, the goal of this study is to transform the way we use English in order to promote peaceful intelligence. It is not to cause harmful cognitive dissonance, but instead to nurture a clearer visibility of ethical choices and privileges regarding language participation and education.
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Runic is a Norse & Anglo-Saxon-Jute, pre-English, Indigenous Euro-language.
