[Linganth] Extended deadline for AAA CFP: Language research for resilience

[Julia Fine]

Dear colleagues,

I hope all's well with everyone. I'd just like to let you know that in
light of the extension of the deadline for AAA abstracts, Jessi and I have
likewise extended our deadline for our CFP for presentations on the theme
of language research for resilience (abstract below). If interested, please
send 250 word abstracts to jlovenic at macalester.edu and jcfine at ucsb.edu by
Sunday, May 10th.

Best wishes,
Julia

Language research for resilience:

Applying linguistic anthropology in times of crisis

Over the past year, communities around the world have faced myriad crises,
including wildfires, flooding, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These crises have
been shown to disproportionately impact communities of color
(Sealey-Huggins 2018), low-income communities (Mendelson et al. 2006),
women (Denton 2002), and other frontline groups. Furthermore, we have seen
that the language used to conceptualize these crises—Chinese coronavirus,
climate change vs. climate crisis, and eco-anxiety, to name just a few
examples—leads to tangible outcomes that likewise disproportionately affect
frontline communities. Language, as we know, can mean the difference
between apathy and engagement, between individualism and solidarity,
between violence and compassion.

In this panel, we envision how language research can a) address injustice
in the face of crisis and b) work towards a safe, just, decolonial, and
regenerative future. One vein of this research involves critical work on
the discourses used by governments, corporations, and individuals in power
to distract, mislead, and disenfranchise others in relation to the climate
and COVID-19 crises (Carvalho 2010; Fløttum 2010; Molek-Kozakowska 2017;
Stibbe 2014). Another, complementary vein of language research seeks
effective, considerate ways of engaging people in community solidarity and
resilience, with consideration of medium (Schäfer & Schlichting 2014;
Segerberg & Bennett 2011), affect (Chapman, Lickel, and Markowitz 2017;
Norgaard 2011; Pihkala 2018), identity and positionality (Jaspal, Nerlich,
& Cinnirella 2014; Love-Nichols, 2020), and sociocultural and interactional
context (Anderson & Williams 2015). In both these areas, we advocate for
research that is accessible, applicable, community-based, decolonial, and
intersectional. Some of the topics we consider include:

Examples of research


   -

   Community-based and/or critical research on language and climate justice
   -

   Community-based and/or critical research on language and the coronavirus
   -

   Work that considers the intersections of the above topics with
   raciolinguistics (Rosa & Flores 2017), Indigenous epistemologies (e.g.
   Baldwin & Colebrook 2018), language, gender, and (a)sexuality, language and
   disability justice, decoloniality, and other topics related to language and
   social justice


Questions


   -

   How can researchers within academia build partnerships with activist
   organizations, community stakeholders, and media outlets?
   -

   How can we reframe the goals of our research to center immediate
   community needs over contributions to scholarship for scholarship’s sake?
   -

   How can we share our work in more accessible ways?
   -

   How can we engage people in citizen science related to themes of
   language and climate justice and COVID-19 justice?
   -

   What other academic disciplines should we engage with, and how should
   these engagements be structured?
   -

   How can we change the way we teach to be more accessible and more
   supportive of student activists?
   -

   How can we change the way we conference to be more accessible and
   sustainable?


We warmly invite contributions from researchers working on questions of
language and social justice, language and the environment, language and
public health, and any other related topic.
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