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Arguably, one of the most important tasks of a decolonial linguistics is to rethink language in order to reimagine ourselves as human. This involves deconstructing discourses and practices of language, which, honed through centuries of (neo) colonial exploitation, continue to racialize, dehumanize and estrange different others through what Gabriela Veronelli (2016) has termed the ‘coloniality of language’. Moving beyond linguistic coloniality involves understanding how language informs how, and in what ways, we inhabit our bodies and engage with others racially. More precisely, it obliges us to develop a decolonial (socio) linguistics that has as its centrepiece a theory and practice of selfhood. Writing from South Africa with its continuing struggles to transform racially, we suggest that selfhood in a decolonial (socio) linguistics must tackle the problem of how selves can become something else than they are. How …