[Linganth] Call For Abstracts for Applied Linguistics & Social Justice Special Issue: Deadline March 13th at 9 PM PST

[Netta Avineri]

Call For Abstracts for Applied Linguistics & Social Justice Special Issue:
Deadline March 13th at 9 PM PST


The field of applied linguistics
<https://academic.oup.com/applij/issue/36/4> is concerned with “real world
problems”
<https://academic.oup.com/applij/article-abstract/26/4/479/145371?redirectedFrom=fulltext>.
In order to truly engage with the real world it is essential to recognize
systemic inequities and their relationships with language(s). This special
issue will consider the range of interdisciplinary theoretical and
methodological approaches that applied linguists have utilized in
collaboration with academics, practitioners, and varied communities to
address social (in)justices. Such work involves working collaboratively to
ensure that social institutions are inclusive of everyone’s needs and
wants, which means full and equal participation, equitable distribution of
resources, access to opportunities, a recognition of the histories of
oppression, and consciousness-raising for resistance (Bell, 2007).


A social justice-oriented applied linguistics would recognize the micro,
meso, and macro root causes of systemic (in)justice and the ways that
language is implicated in these issues. These include an applied
linguistics that centers our most pressing issues such as, but not limited
to, language and the criminal justice system (cf. Baran & Holmquist, 2019),
US Census categories (Zentella, 2019), interpreters in health care contexts
(Martinez et al, 2017), sports team mascot names (Avineri & Perley, 2019),
”language gap” (Avineri et al, 2015), bilingual education (Flores & Garcia,
2017), anti-colonial language education (de los Rios et al, 2019), terms
like “illegal” immigrants (Rosa, 2019), oppression and indigenous and
endangered languages (Leonard, 2018), and social media representations of
different cultural groups (Smalls, 2019). Therefore, it is essential to
examine and dismantle how societies are structured in order to create
transformative solutions in collaboration with all involved.


In recent years, the field has begun to focus explicitly on public
engagement, advocacy, and social justice. For example, in 2016, AAAL
created the Public Affairs and Engagement Committee
<https://www.aaal.org/paec> (and Applied Linguistics and Social Justice
listserv) and the AAAL theme that year was Applied Linguistics Applied. The
BAAL highlights applied linguistics efforts
<https://www.baal.org.uk/british-association-for-applied-linguistics/what-applied-linguistics-is-and-does/>
focused on real world issues and social change. There have been efforts at
critical applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2001), engaged applied
linguistics, social justice and English language teaching (Hastings, 2016),
anti-racism and English language teaching (Motha, 2016), and decolonizing
language education (Lopez-Gopar 2016, Macedo 2019). There has also been an
increasing acknowledgment of a lack of (racial) diversity in the field
itself (and therefore epistemic injustice) (Bhattacharya, Jiang, &
Canagarajah, 2019, Kubota, 2019). These movements are alongside broader
conversations about the relationships between language and social justice
(cf. Avineri et al., 2019, Piller, 2016), sociolinguistic justice (Bucholtz
et al. 2016) and linguistics in the pursuit of justice (Baugh, 2018).


This special issue of the journal Applied Linguistics encourages
interdisciplinary theoretical, practical, and methodological contributions
that call for applied linguistics as a social justice-oriented discipline.
Papers in the special issue will include an explicit framing of social
justice in relation to individuals, communities, languages, and contexts.
The papers will provide readers with multiple approaches to social justice
as it relates to language in a variety of real world contexts. Abstracts
should clearly outline how social justice frameworks are central to the
scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and/or activism presented.


Papers may focus on micro, meso, and/or  macro levels of applied
linguistics and social justice. Examples included below:

Micro: biases, classroom activities, differentiation, equity, ethics,
experiences, identities, interpersonal/intercultural interactions,
intersectionalities, histories, how language is used to
describe/elevate/marginalize particular groups of people, inclusive
teaching practices, language use in gatekeeping institutions, lesson
planning, materials selection

Meso:  curriculum design and assessment, institutional structures, language
policies, language varieties, power and privilege dynamics

Macro: decolonizing pedagogy, hegemony of English, histories of oppression
and structural inequalities in the communities/countries/regions where
languages are taught and learned, how different languages are
valued/perceived, language ideologies, power dynamics, which languages get
taught and learned at the global scale


Papers co-authored by scholars, community members, and practitioners are
especially encouraged. Contributions from both early career and seasoned
scholars will be invited. Diverse formats will be explored, including
individuals in conversation with one another as well as audio/video/media
components. Attention will also be paid to citations/references to ensure
that a diversity of voices are being acknowledged in the works themselves.
Overall, the special issue will provide a forum for creating collaborative
multilingual spaces in which societal inequities can be both explored and
resisted through the inclusion of diverse voices and ways of knowing.


Please send 350 word abstracts to appliedlingsocialjustice at gmail.com by
Friday March 13, 2020, 9pm PST to be considered for inclusion in the
special issue proposal. Authors will be notified by early April if their
abstract will be included in the proposal. Please contact Netta Avineri and
Danny C. Martinez at the email above with any questions.
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