37.3663, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - The Moral Responsibility to Decolonise General Linguistics on Minoritised and Indigenous Languages: Are Research Practices Changing and Is the Change Improving the Quality of Research? (Slovakia)

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Subject: 37.3663, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - The Moral Responsibility to Decolonise General Linguistics on Minoritised and Indigenous Languages: Are Research Practices Changing and Is the Change Improving the Quality of Research? (Slovakia)

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Date: 04-Nov-2026
From: Marcela Huilcan [m.i.huilcan.herrera at rug.nl]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2027 - The Moral Responsibility to Decolonise General Linguistics on Minoritised and Indigenous Languages: Are Research Practices Changing and Is the Change Improving the Quality of Research?


Workshop at SLE 2027 - The Moral Responsibility to Decolonise General
Linguistics on Minoritised and Indigenous Languages: Are Research
Practices Changing and Is the Change Improving the Quality of
Research?

Date: 25-Aug-2027 - 28-Aug-2027
Location: Košice, Slovakia
Contact: Marcela I. Huilcan
Contact Email: m.i.huilcan.herrera at rug.nl

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Language Documentation;
Morphology; Sociolinguistics

Submission Deadline: 18-Nov-2026

Keywords: Decolonial linguistics; linguistic fieldwork; collaborative
research; research validity; Indigenous epistemologies
Call for Preliminary Abstracts: Please send your provisional abstracts
of up to 100 words, excluding references, by November 18, 2026, to
m.mazzoli at rug.nl
m.i.huilcan at rug.nl
jillian.melchor at helsinki.fi
Workshop convenors:
Maria Mazzoli (University of Groningen)
Marcela Huilcán (University of Groningen)
Jillian Melchor (University of Helsinki)
Workshop Description:
Decolonisation is increasingly recognised as a moral responsibility in
research with Indigenous and minoritised language communities.
However, critical reflection is needed on how to transform problematic
aspects of academic research and what consequences such
transformations have, when implemented, for the validity of linguistic
research and the quality of the knowledge it produces.
Decolonial approaches to linguistics call for a fundamental
reconsideration of the assumptions, practices, and values implicit in
linguistic research. Beyond promoting ethical fieldwork and fair
relations between researchers and language communities, decolonisation
raises questions about the production of linguistic knowledge itself:
who determines research priorities, whose knowledge is recognised as
legitimate, what methodologies are appropriate, how linguistic
expertise is defined, and who benefits from the outcomes of research
(Smith 2021; Kovach 2021; Leonard 2023). These questions are
particularly pressing for linguists working with Indigenous,
minoritised, and endangered language communities, whose languages and
communities have undergone centuries of colonial oppression,
perpetuated also by academic institutions and academics through
research (Deumert et al. 2021).
The consolidation of documentary linguistics constituted an important
academic response to language shift and declining intergenerational
transmission among the world languages. However, the field is openly
concerned about the future and sustainability of
theoretical/typological academic work, and there have been concerns
about whether language documentation and description also support the
communities and the languages affected respectfully and effectively. A
main concern involves the construction of linguistic authority and
authenticity. Although the priorities and methodologies of
contemporary documentary linguistics are considerably diverse,
assumptions imbibed in linguistic purism and standard language
ideology still inform speaker selection, data collection, and the
evaluation of linguistic competence (Huilcán et al. in press).
Privileging fluent first language speakers for documentation,
description, and other academic purposes is inevitable, but also
inevitably marginalises younger speakers, bilingual speakers, new
speakers, heritage learners, and community members whose linguistic
repertoires reflect interrupted transmission (Bucholtz 2003). Such
practices reinforce restrictive ideologies of authenticity and
overlook the central role of language learners and new speakers in
sustaining revitalisation practices and vitality (Dorian 1994;
O’Rourke et al. 2015). Another concern relates to the organisation of
research itself. Despite substantial developments in collaborative and
community-based methodologies (Czaykowska-Higgins 2009, Leonard 2010),
linguistic projects continue to be shaped primarily by
academically-defined research questions, academic timelines, and
publication priorities. Even where research outputs are returned to
communities, the extent to which they are accessible, usable, and
relevant to locally defined priorities remains limited in many cases
(Czaykowska-Higgins 2009, Good 2018).
Decolonial scholarship offers a range of approaches to addressing
these challenges (cf. Deumert et al. 2020, Charity Hudley et al.
2024). First, openness to epistemological pluralism. Decolonial
linguistics invites researchers to critically examine the presumed
objectivity of Western academic categories, theories, and methods, and
to seriously engage with Indigenous and other epistemologies. This
involves more than incorporating community knowledge into existing
scientific frameworks: it raises the possibility that alternative
understandings of language and knowledge could contribute to
transforming linguistic analysis and theory themselves (Smith 2021;
Kovach 2021, Huilcán et al. in press).
Second, a redistribution of authority within research projects that
concern endangered and Indigenous language communities. Collaborative
and community-based approaches seek to move beyond consultation toward
shared and community-led decision-making. This transformation also
calls for reconsidering the roles of linguists, community researchers,
language teachers, and other knowledge holders (Flores & Rosa 2015).
Third, the appreciation towards the role of young community members
interested in learning, to balance the attention towards older
community members, holders of traditional forms of knowledge. Research
can be designed in dialogue with community-defined goals for language
learning, use, transmission, and cultural continuity (Sippola et al.
2026). This includes recognising and addressing the needs of the
younger generations, new speakers and learners, without imposing
externally defined standards of fluency or authenticity (McCarty et
al. 2018; Leonard 2023; Huilcán et al. in press).
These transformations are not straightforward or uncontested. They may
generate tensions between disciplinary objectives, researchers’ needs
and community priorities; they may expose contradictions between, on
the one hand, commitments to decolonisation and, on the other hand,
institutional requirements concerning funding, publication, career
advancement, research evaluation and research validity standards. They
may also reveal a potentially fraught relationship between decolonial
agendas externally articulated by researchers and the plurality of
perspectives that exist within communities themselves, raising
questions about the extent to which such epistemic frameworks, however
well intentioned, reflect community aspirations for the future of
their language and their own interpretations of their colonial past
(Melchor in press). Notwithstanding these tensions, a decolonial
approach is a moral imperative for contemporary academic research,
particularly when involving communities that suffered colonisation
(Thambinathan & Kinsella 2021; Udah 2024; Ndhlovu 2026). A body of
scholarship has focussed on how to make collaborative projects
effectively collaborative along the lines outlined above (Leonard &
Haynes 2010). Importantly, the growing body of collaborative and
community-led research demonstrated also that these transforming
approaches can generate methodological innovation and new forms of
linguistic knowledge (Lesho & Sippola 2014, Gibson et al. 2024).
Critical is the impact that decolonial approaches may have on research
validity, intended as assurance for a well-founded, trustworthy, and
contextually adequate knowledge about the phenomena investigated
(Maxwell 1992). Decoloniality warns that methodological rigour does
not automatically guarantee epistemological adequacy, as for example a
linguistic description may be formally accurate but have limited
interpretive validity, if it imposes categories that misrepresent how
community members conceptualise their language (Smith 2021). New ways
of conceptualising validity within science have been proposed, mainly
in dialogue with qualitative research. For example, Research is
ceremony (Wilson 2008) introduces the concept of “relational
accountability”, while Bischop (1998) uses the framework of Kaupapa
Māori for proposing a way out of neo-coloniality in contemporary
research (cf. also Pihama et al. 2026). The development of a shared
decolonial epistemology and the potential for increased research
quality, validity and impact are the focus of our workshop, along with
the challenges that come along with this change in perspective.
This workshop aims to bring together linguists who are engaging with
decolonial practices in their research, particularly within the
traditions of general linguistics, documentary and descriptive
linguistics, sociolinguistics and theoretical/typological linguistics
represented in the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Rather than treating
decolonisation exclusively as a theoretical or ethical commitment, the
workshop recognises decolonisation as potentially transformative for
the field, and wants to bring the decolonial critique into dialogue
with the everyday research practices, the theoretical ambitions of
linguistics and the academic expectations we are exposed to. We
welcome contributions that focus on linguistically-oriented academic
research and explore the possibilities, contradictions, and
limitations of decolonial research practices, including cases in which
efforts to reconcile academic and community priorities have proven
difficult or unsuccessful.
We will look into the following research questions:
1. How are decolonial principles being interpreted and implemented in
contemporary linguistic research, particularly by members of the
Societas Linguistica Europaea, in research conducted in Europe and
beyond?
2. What methodological, epistemological, ethical, and institutional
challenges arise when researchers and communities seek to develop
collaborative or decolonial research?
3. How might decolonial approaches reshape the methodological
approaches and the epistemological values of linguistic academic
research?
4. Does a decolonial approach improve research validity? How, under
which conditions and to what extent?
References:
Akumbu, P. W., Mazzoli M., Outakoski H-M & Sippola E. (2024).
Decolonization and linguistics: A conversation on opportunities and
challenges. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 10: 26–40.
Bishop, R. (1998). Freeing ourselves from neo-colonial domination in
research: A Māori approach to creating knowledge. International
Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(2), 199–219.
Bucholtz, M. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication
of identity. M Bucholtz. Journal of sociolinguistics 7 (3), 1346.
Charity Hudley, A. H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (Eds.). (2024).
Decolonizing linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Czaykowska-Higgins, E. (2009). Research models, community engagement,
and linguistic fieldwork: Reflections on working within Canadian
Indigenous communities. Language Documentation & Conservation, 3(1),
15–50.
Deumert, Ana, Anne Storch, and Nick Shepherd (eds), (2020) Colonial
and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes (Oxford, 2020;
online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 Feb. 2021)
Dorian, N. C. (1994). Purism vs. compromise in language revitalization
and language revival. Language in Society, 23(4), 479–494.
Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness:
Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education.
Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149–171.
Gibson, Hannah, and Kyle Jerro, Savithry Namboodiripad, Kristina
Riedel (2024). Towards a Decolonial Syntax: Research, Teaching,
Publishing, in Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary
Bucholtz (eds), Decolonizing Methods of Teaching and Research, in Anne
H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz (eds),
Decolonizing Linguistics (New York, online edn, Oxford Academic.
Good, J. (2018). Ethics in language documentation and revitalization.
In K. L. Rehg & L. Campbell (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of endangered
languages (pp. 419–440). Oxford University Press.
Huilcán, M. I., Mazzoli, M. and Morin, R. (in press, planned 2027).
Consolidating a decolonial shift in the field of linguistics:
Endangered language learners and Indigenous epistemologies. In
Sippola, E. and Levisen C. (eds) Handbook of Postcolonial and
Decolonial Linguistics. London: Routledge.
Kovach, M. (2021). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics,
conversations, and contexts (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press.
Leonard, W. Y. (2023). Refusing “endangered languages” narratives.
Dædalus, 152(3), 69–83.
Leonard, W. Y., & Haynes, E. (2010). Making “collaboration”
collaborative: An examination of perspectives that frame linguistic
field research. Language Documentation & Conservation, 4, 268–293.
Lesho M, Sippola E. (2014) Folk perceptions of variation among the
Chabacano Creoles. Revista de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e
Espanhola, 5: 1–46.
Maxwell, J. A. (1992). Understanding and validity in qualitative
research. Harvard Educational Review, 62(3), 279–300.
Melchor, J. L. (in press, planned 2027). Towards a (critical)
genealogy of minoritised languages: Insights from the Philippine
Chabacano Creoles. In Sippola, E. and Levisen C. (eds) Handbook of
Postcolonial and Decolonial Linguistics. London: Routledge.
Ndhlovu, F. (2026). Resistance ethics for a decolonial
sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 30(3), 306–311.
Pihama, L., Hohepa, M. K., Smith, L. T., Smith, G. H., Lee-Morgan, J.,
Roskruge, M., & Skipper, H. (2026). Kaupapa Māori: A Māori Approach to
Transformative Change. Genealogy, 10(2), 59.
O’Rourke, B., Pujolar, J., & Ramallo, F. (Eds.). (2015). New Speakers
of Minority Languages: Linguistic Ideologies and Practices. Palgrave
Macmillan.
Sippola, E., Perez, D., & Melchor, J. (2026). Documenting a Creole:
Aligning Research Goals with Community Goals. Languages, 11(8), 153.
Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and
Indigenous peoples (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Thambinathan, V., & Kinsella, E. A. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies
in qualitative research: Creating spaces for transformative praxis.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 1–9.
Udah, H. (2024). Decolonising research for justice: Ethical
imperatives and practical applications. International Journal of
Qualitative Methods, 23, 1–10.
Wilson, S. (2008). Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods.
Fernwood Publishing.


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