Curated Theme: Making academic practices in linguistics more sustainable: reducing negative impact on the environment and society
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General questions to ask oneself about practices in academia
- What academic practices could/should have a reduction of impact?
- What matters to people? What matters to linguists? What are the interests of all parties? (How) is it possible to combine all of these?
- Who has expertise? on what? How can we combine the expertise of different people to have a positive impact together?
- Who decides on the topics that are researched on? Who should take these decisions?
On the impact of linguistics on the environment and society
Do we want to reduce negative impacts, or to increase positive impacts?
Reduce negative impacts
Increase positive impacts
If we want to increase positive impacts, this can be done by including more diversity in the origin, medium and structure of the sources used in academic research. <HC: add a few terms and sources of IND-311, e.g. pluralism> frameworks, theories, interdisciplinarity, representativity, inclusivity of people and views, collaborative work. the solutions are not waiting on a university desk. acknowledge one's own background
Interdisciplinarity and representativity
The positive impact of linguistic fieldwork can be increased by using interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary methods.
Representativity
- Other people outside of traditional "Western" linguistics have points of view and methods of research that are also valuable to the research of language - i.e. linguistics.
- e.g. considering nature and society as two different things (which the SDG do) is a eurocentric thought.
- increase representativity and inclusivity of perspectives > more internal "interdisciplinarity"
- in order to really understand language endangerment (as well as language in general), we need more views about it.
- e.g. about division of nature/culture made in Western societies, which "does often not correspond to the way in which many Indigenous cultures view this relation, which affects their views on language" (lecture on ecolinguistics, week 3, slide 46)
- e.g. TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) (see also slides Wk6_EcolingII)
- > Western bias
Other
- impact on prestige of minority languages and attitudes towards them
See also the Curated theme: Making academic practices in linguistics more sustainable: collaborating within and beyond disciplines
Four arguments for language maintenance
- social justice, political reasons to stop speaking a language.
- epistemic sustainability: "A dying language is a burning library of knowledge"
- indigenous wellbeing / wellbeing of minorities (not only language minorities but minorities in general)
- spiritual, land-based, cultural identity, emotional health, physical health, educational, economic, restorative[1]
- linguistic diversity
Impact on society
- fieldwork ethics
- find the relevance of linguistics through what it brings to people and society.
Impact on environment:
- conferencing
- publishing
- archiving and data access
- research tools
- others
- The choice of research topics is relevant (also the points of view that we include in the research and publications)
- funding
- power & hierarchies
- pressure to publish
Sustainable academia (quotes from Wk4 slide 27)
- Sustainable academic practices: Having a shared set of values around ‘how to do things’ that promote inclusivity, understanding and maximising long-term continuation without causing harm.
- Sustainable academic infrastructures: Having institutional and long-term support to maintain sustainable practices.
Concrete solutions
Possible pages and categories to link
specific SDG's.
- ↑ Angelo et al. 2019: 12. Dimensions of the WILE framework. // Angelo, D., C. O’Shannessy, J. Simpson, I. Kral, H. Smith, and E. Browne (2019). Well-being and indigenous language ecologies (wile): a strengths-based approach: Literature review, national indigenous languages report, pillar 2
