CLDI

The Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI) is an online, open-access, transcribed corpus of video data for use in research, teaching, and community engagement. The project is organized by Chase Wesley Raymond (University of Colorado, Boulder), in collaboration with Saul Albert (Loughborough University) and Elliott M. Hoey (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), working together with students and colleagues from around the world.

The interactions in the CLDI—comprised of videos drawn primarily from private citizens’ cell phones and footage from institutional security cameras—show individuals being policed in some way for the language they are speaking or otherwise endorsing while sharing public space (e.g. at a store or restaurant, in a public park or parking lot). While estimates as to the contemporary prevalence of these sorts of confrontations vary, in her seminal work on Puerto Rican Spanish speakers living in New York, for instance, Bonnie Urciuoli pointedly noted: "Nearly every Spanish-speaking bilingual I know…has experienced complaints about using Spanish in a public place" (1996:35, our emphasis, see also Hill 1998). Such interactions constitute concrete, identifiable occurrences of a specific genre of language discrimination and policing in quotidian social life—one that has been reported to be on the rise in communities across the globe, not infrequently accompanied by other overt acts of verbal, emotional, physical, and racialized violence (e.g. Dubinsky, et al. 2020; Rasool & Makuve 2022; Rey Agudo 2019).

The CLDI therefore aims to offer a close-up look at what are very real experiences for many members of society as they use language in public spaces. These are emotionally laden, overtly derogatory and racist, and even physically violent altercations, which unfold not in political debate halls or through written legislation, but rather as individuals are in their daily place of employment (e.g. CLDI_011, CLDI_020, CLDI_022) or out for a drive (e.g. CLDI_029, CLDI_047), as families are shopping for goods and services (e.g. CLDI_007, CLDI_014, CLDI_046, CLDI_060) or dining together at a restaurant (e.g. CLDI_003, CLDI_059), and as folks take buses and trains (e.g. CLDI_013, CLDI_077) or listen to music in the park (e.g. CLDI_049). This is language policymaking and enforcement in situ, in everyday public social life, and these participants—Challengers, Targets, and Bystanders, ‘regular’, ‘nonspecialist’ members of society—are the de facto policymakers, enforcers, combatants, and casualties of its occurrence. Assembling such encounters together into a corpus allows us to examine real forms of policing repeatedly and critically as they are produced and dealt with by real people, in real situations, and in real time.

For more information about the CLDI (e.g. inclusion/exclusion criteria, search procedures, etc.), please see our forthcoming paper in Language, available for download below.

Citation information

If you use the CLDI, please cite it as:

Raymond, Chase Wesley, Saul Albert, Elliott M. Hoey, Sarah M. Adams, Natalie Grothues, Jacob Henry, Olivia H. Marrese, Megan Pielke, Emily Reynolds, and Regina Gayou Tom. (Frth., 2025) Language Policy as Interactional Practice in Everyday Public Space: The Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction. To appear in: Language.

Contribute a new case

If you have a case to contribute, please use the following form: https://forms.gle/YSAESvBTpUMzq7VW8

The data

	Vernacular title	Date of incident	Location of incident	Context	Linguistic medium	Targeted 'languages'	Recording length	Download files
CLDI 001	Tutoring session at a California cafe	12 December 2017	Walnut Creek, California, USA	Coffee shop	English	Korean; Asian	1 min 12 sec	https://osf.io/4bqxp/
CLDI 002	New York lawyer threatens to call ICE	18 June 2018	Manhattan, New York, USA	Restaurant	English	Spanish	0 min 55 sec	https://osf.io/yk5a6/
CLDI 003	Castro and Nazis	31 July 2015		Restaurant	English	Spanish	3 min 22 sec	https://osf.io/zngxe
CLDI 004	We don’t speak about her	21 April 2022	New Caney, Texas, USA	Store	English	Spanish	0 min 29 sec	https://osf.io/tkrjh/
CLDI 005	Why is it that every time			Store	English	Hmong	1 min 27 sec	https://osf.io/yk5a6/
CLDI 006	Food order with green peppers	6 September 2015		Restaurant	English	Spanish	1 min 23 sec	https://osf.io/t9xnk/
CLDI 007	Harassment at self-checkout	14 January 2017		Store	English	Greek	0 min 35 sec	https://osf.io/xerk8/
CLDI 008	Don’t you know the rules	16 July 2019	Naperville, Illinois, USA	Store	English	Spanish	0 min 45 sec	https://osf.io/nrv5y/
CLDI 009	You came here to get tacos bro	27 March 2019	Anaheim, California, USA	Restaurant	English	Spanish	0 min 36 sec	https://osf.io/4yz6m/
CLDI 010	The taxpayers probably paid for all that stuff	20 December 2016	Louisville, Kentucky, USA	Store	English	Spanish	1 min 21 sec	https://osf.io/c6zve/
CLDI 011	I lived in California for twenty years	16 February 2019	Parkersburg, West Virginia, USA	Restaurant	English	Spanish	2 min 21 sec	https://osf.io/vux6g/
CLDI 012	You leave these women alone	1 October 2018	Rifle, Colorado, USA	Store	English	Spanish	0 min 33 sec	https://osf.io/v4r89/
CLDI 013	I love Puerto Ricans	23 December 2019	Amherst, Massachusetts	Public bus	English	Chinese; Korean; Spanish	5 min 11 sec	https://osf.io/dqba8/
CLDI 014	Run your mouth						3 min 5 sec	https://osf.io/jd4rv/
CLDI 015	Airport altercation			Airport			8 min 4 sec	https://osf.io/dv7kq/
CLDI 016	Are you here illegally	16 June 2019	Tampa, Florida, USA	Store	English	Spanish	0 min 24 sec	https://osf.io/thbd7
CLDI 017	New York lawyer at protest	29 April 2017	New York City, New York, USA	Public street, protest	English	English	1 min 55 sec	https://osf.io/549k8/
CLDI 018	U.S. Border Patrol in Montana	16 May 2018	Havre, Montana, USA	Gas station	English	Spanish	19 min 40 sec	https://osf.io/5xnvp/
CLDI 019	You want me to spell it for you	13 June 2022	Orlando, Florida, USA	Restaurant	English	Chinese Korean	0 min 40 sec	https://osf.io/tw954/
CLDI 020	Restaurant manager with aftermath	9 July 2019	Eustis, Florida, USA	Restaurant	English	Spanish	5 min 12 sec	https://osf.io/tvad4/
CLDI 021	Bona fide American						2 min 31 sec	https://osf.io/5sdeg/
CLDI 022	Donald Trump and the President of Mexico	24 February 2024	National Harbor, Maryland	Political speech	English	Spanish	0 min 53 sec	https://osf.io/tdbaz/
CLDI 023	Parking lot in Grand Junction, Colorado	August 2016	Grand Junction, Colorado, USA	Parking lot	English	Spanish	0 min 50 sec	https://osf.io/r8uvz/
CLDI 024	Racist at food pickup	22 September 2019	Savannah, Georgia, USA	Restaurant	English	Spanish	0 minl 59 sec	https://osf.io/bkvh5/
CLDI 025	Dispute over masking in rideshare ride	28 May 2020		Rideshare	English	Spanish	6 min 7 sec	https://osf.io/f3mrt/
CLDI 026	English only at kindergarten concert	23 April 2015	Perry, Iowa, USA	School event	English	Spanish	0 min 49 sec	https://osf.io/4jmkb/
CLDI 027	Farmers market employee	August 2017	Cookstown, New Jersey, USA	Farmer's market	English	Asian	1 min 59 sec	https://osf.io/vksnb/
CLDI 028	We’re gonna nuke you guys			Public street	English	Asian	0 min 31 sec	https://osf.io/ac24f/
CLDI 029	Did you just make a racist comment	June 2020	California, USA	Parking lot	English	Asian	1 min 48 sec	https://osf.io/4dx5j/
CLDI 030	Who wears black in California sun	June 2020	California, USA	Public park	English	Asian	1 min 15 sec	https://osf.io/8bac2/
CLDI 031	I hope Trump deports you	30 June 2019	Pennsylvania (?), USA	Store	English	Spanish	2 min 9 sec	https://osf.io/m8kyj/
CLDI 032	This is a gated community	11 July 2020	Palm Beach, Florida, USA	Neighborhood	English	Spanish Haitian Creole	7 min 21 sec	https://osf.io/gy83w/
CLDI 033	I pay your income taxes			Beach	English	Spanish	0 min 58 sec	https://osf.io/s6fnx/
CLDI 034	Just trying to translate – video 1			Restaurant	English	Spanish	1 min 4 sec	https://osf.io/dvs6p/
CLDI 035	Just trying to translate – video 2			Restaurant	English	Spanish	1 min 8 sec	https://osf.io/ad6kp/
CLDI 036	We don’t let you people there	17 November 2018	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	Parking lot	English	Spanish	0 min 24 sec	https://osf.io/2prbv/
CLDI 037	He punked somebody for an outfit	8 April 2019	Glendora, California, USA	Parking lot	English	Spanish	3 min 12 sec	https://osf.io/w5j49/
CLDI 038	It’s a forty-five minute trip	2019	Houston, Texas, USA?	Rideshare	English	Spanish	4 min 37 sec	https://osf.io/t6j8m/
CLDI 039	Mock food order			Restaurant	English	Spanish	0 min 8 sec	https://osf.io/a3cdf/
CLDI 040	I’m boots on the ground here	10 July 2020	Nashua, New Hampshire, USA	Public street	English	Spanish	9 min 48 sec	https://osf.io/kdgam/
CLDI 041	Pizza shop's first Karen			Pizza shop			2 min 23 sec	https://osf.io/9ac3z/
CLDI 042	Spanish drive-thru in Miami, Florida	11 September 2019	Miami (Hialeah), Florida, USA	Restaurant	English	Spanish	1 min 55 sec	https://osf.io/nczd7/
CLDI 043	San Francisco public street		San Francisco, California, USA	Public street	English	Spanish	0 min 14 sec	https://osf.io/mx9s3/
CLDI 044	Chancellor at graduation ceremony	10 December 2022	Hammond, Indiana, USA & live-streamed online	Graduation ceremony	English	Asian	0 min 16 sec	https://osf.io/7dqeg/
CLDI 045	If they did something wrong – video 1	8 June 2018	Hillsborough County, Florida, USA	Nail salon	English	Vietnamese English	3 min 7 sec	https://osf.io/6pfmd/
CLDI 046	If they did something wrong – video 2	8 June 2018	Hillsborough County, Florida, USA	Nail salon	English	Vietnamese English	3 min 43 sec	https://osf.io/yb8er/
CLDI 047	Parking lot turn signal			Parking lot	English	Chinese	1 min 6 sec	https://osf.io/nbsvx/
CLDI 048	Tamales	8 June 2022	San Pedro, California, USA	Street, Neighborhood	English	Spanish	0 min 15 sec	https://osf.io/mw7fh/
CLDI 049	Music in the park	20 May 2020	Wisconsin, USA	Public park	English	Spanish	1 min 0 sec	https://osf.io/xhtwd/
CLDI 050	Car accident and bystander intervention	9 November 2018	Austin, Texas, USA	Public street	English	Spanish	7 min 56 sec	https://osf.io/7vyad/
CLDI 051	You shouldn’t be fishing here	13 May 2017	Miami, Florida, USA	Neighbourhood	English	Spanish	2 min 8 sec	https://osf.io/hxqfp/
CLDI 052	They wanna destroy the nuclear family	2020	Littleton, New Hampshire, USA	Public street, protest	English	Spanish	0 min 42 sec	https://osf.io/2xy5v/
CLDI 053	Music at the hotel pool			Hotel pool	English	Spanish	6 min 7 sec	https://osf.io/d9gx6/
CLDI 054	New York subway seat altercation	30 May 2018	Brooklyn, New York, USA	Subway	English	Chinese Asian	1 min 59 sec	https://osf.io/zsr8k/
CLDI 055	Go back to Spain			Apartment complex	English	Spanish	0 min 59 sec	https://osf.io/n2ufs/
CLDI 056	That is not nice	3 December 2018	Eugene, Oregon, USA	Store	English	Spanish	1 min 56 sec	https://osf.io/skzgh/
CLDI 057	This is a free country - video 1	28 March 2019	San Jose, California, USA	Store (gas station)	English	Spanish	0 min 19 sec	https://osf.io/b2j93/
CLDI 058	This is a free country - video 2	28 March 2019	San Jose, California, USA	Store (gas station)	English	Spanish	0 min 29 sec	https://osf.io/4apq6/
CLDI 059	This is a free country - video 3	28 March 2019	San Jose, California, USA	Store (gas station)	English	Spanish	0 min 59 sec	https://osf.io/38xuc/
CLDI 060	Porque estamos en Texas	14 October 2018	Houston (Pasadena), Texas, USA	Store	English	Spanish	0 min 40 sec	https://osf.io/z3nrj/
CLDI 062	They fought for your right to speak American	16 October 2017	Cliffside Park, New Jersey, USA	High school classroom	English	Spanish	0 min 26 sec	https://osf.io/ag2hy/
CLDI 063	At least I have my teeth – video 1	4 September 2017	Durant, Oklahoma, USA	Store	English	Spanish	0 min 48 sec	https://osf.io/gdf7j/
CLDI 064	At least I have my teeth – video 2	4 September 2017	Durant, Oklahoma, USA	Store, parking lot	English	Spanish	2 min 19 sec	https://osf.io/yhpf5/
CLDI 065	You better respect your elders						5 min 28 sec	https://osf.io/as8gw/
CLDI 066	Mandated by the government	27 July 2021	Klamath County, Oregon, USA	Government meeting	English	Spanish	1 min 11 sec	https://osf.io/wjk2q/
CLDI 067	Towaway company reception desk			Store	English	Spanish Haitian Creole	2 min 18 sec	https://osf.io/y84qp/
CLDI 068	Texas substitute teacher	18 November 2019	El Paso, Texas, USA	High school classroom	English	Spanish	0 min 11 sec	qau89
CLDI 070	Stay right here, don’t go nowhere	2021	South Norwalk, Connecticut, USA	Parking lot	English	Spanish	1 min 22 sec	https://osf.io/pvjfq/
CLDI 071	Playing bingo						0 min 47 sec	https://osf.io/syq7z/
CLDI 072	Indian American women assaulted in parking lot			Parking lot			5 min 24 sec	https://osf.io/tjzaq/
CLDI 075	I’m recording, I’m recording			Parking lot	English	Spanish	0 min 57 sec	https://osf.io/tgp5a/
CLDI 076	Where’s the birdseed			Store	English	Spanish	1 min 29 sec	https://osf.io/95suz/
CLDI 082	Republican Presidential Primary 2015			Political speech			4 min 15 sec	https://osf.io/ke2mg/
CLDI 083	California cardiologist and patient						0 min 59 sec	https://osf.io/68r7j/
CLDI 084	Comedy show heckler			Comedy show			7 min 55 sec	https://osf.io/mp9sw/
CLDI 086	Fourth of July music						0 min 54 sec	https://osf.io/vnb4w/