CfP: Conceptual and methodological challenges in linguistic inclusion

We are looking for contributors to a workshop about “Conceptual and methodological challenges in linguistic inclusion.”

When: Thursday, December 14, 2023, full day
Where: Macquarie University
Keynote speakers:
Dr Alexandra Grey, University of Technology Sydney
Dr Trang Nguyen, University of Melbourne

What: Despite the ever-increasing linguistic diversity of Australian society, our institutions continue to be organized as monolingual spaces. This creates barriers to full and equitable social participation for those who do not speak English, do not speak it well, or have low levels of (English) literacy. At this point in time, research into language barriers to education, work, healthcare, law, and all aspects of social life faces at least three intertwined conceptual and methodological challenges, which this workshop is designed to explore:

1. Emerging languages: some of the fastest-growing communities in Australia include speakers of under-served, under-resourced, and non-standardized languages. This raises significant challenges for the provision of language services, from translation and interpreting to heritage language maintenance and community schooling.
2. Language technologies: the past few years have seen an explosion in assistive language technologies from automated translation via multilingual chatbots to digital diasporas. These technologies offer fresh opportunities for linguistic inclusion while also creating new barriers for linguistically minoritized populations.
3. Epistemic justice: the open science movement challenges us to rethink the research life cycle from design to dissemination. Co-design, data-sharing, multilingual team research, big data, and citizen science are some of the issues reshaping how we approach linguistic diversity and social participation.

The workshop is designed to be highly interactive and we are particularly interested in hearing from HDR candidates and early career researchers working in these areas. We have a small number of short presenter slots (10-15 minutes) on our panels. To have your abstract considered for presentation, submit here by Monday, November 06.

Attendance is free.