Sustainability in linguistics

Sustainability in linguistics can refer to a multitude of phenomena, but most of all it is possibly associated with the sustainable way of practicing it. Many of the aspects to be considered are not limited to linguistics alone (e.g., conferencing and publishing are universal scientific practices), but there are field-specific matters to be discussed for example when talking about collecting data and what kind of effects it might have.

Academic practices

Considerations in different practices

• conferencing
• publishing
• archiving and data access
• research tools
• collecting data

Interdisciplinary linguistics

Scholars agree that sustainability science needs to be interdisciplinary as knowledge, methods, theories etc. from diverse disciplines can be used to better understand sustainable processes and to develop more sustainable ideas and approaches (Thorén, Nagatsu & Schönach, 2021). To integrate sustainability into the field of linguistics, interdisciplinary approaches should therefore be of great help as well. A first step could be to consider findings and methods from the manifold subfields of linguistics as well as those from adjacent disciplines like e.g. cognitive science, computer science, neuroscience, psychology or social science. If applicable, they can be integrated into existing frameworks.

References

Thorén, H., M. Nagatsu and P. Schönach. 2021. ‘Interdisciplinarity’. In Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts, edited by C. P. Krieg and R. Toivanen, 21–37. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-14-2.