Curated Theme: Making academic practices in linguistics more sustainable: reducing negative impact on the environment and society

not finished

Problem definition

Academic practices in linguistics

• academia
  • reduce flights (e.g. conferences), see Rodriguez et al 2019
  • use of open source programs
  • disciplinarity (vs. inter- or multidisciplinarity. compartementalization of academia)
• linguistics
• sustainability / sustainable: SDG
• environment
• society

For which academic practices could/should their impact be reduced?

Positive / negative impact

Do we want to reduce the negative impact, or 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

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.

impact on prestige of minority languages and attitudes towards them

The positive impact of linguistic fieldwork can be increased by collaboration with the speaker community and their decisions about what shall be the results of of the work of a linguist in their community. For example, this can take the form of the creation of educational material in their language.

• 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)
• what matters to people? what matters to linguists? is it possible to combine both? what are the interests of all parties?
• Who has expertise? on what? How can we combine the expertise of different people to have a positive impact together?

Impact on society

• fieldwork ethics
• find the relevance of linguistics through what it brings to people and society.

Possible pages and categories to link

specific SDG's