The CfHR Task Group on Language and Social Justice has addressed a number of human rights related issues this year through conference presentations, scholarly work, and media outreach.
Specific topics and activities include:
1. Critiquing of the so-called “language gap” (encompassed in a special issue of International Multilingual Research Journal and an Anthropology News article),
2. Supporting bilingual education, especially the California Senate Bill 1174 (e.g., featured in the SLA Presidential Conversation on Multilingual Education and Social Justice at AAA 2016, and a Huffington Post blog)
3. Speaking up about contingent labor in the academy (e.g., at a AAA 2016 roundtable, “Intersectional Perspectives on the Unethical Reliance on Contingent Labor in Academia”).
Additionally, task group members were asked to convene an invited colloquium at AAAL 2016 on “Applied Linguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, and Social Justice: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Linguistic and Social Change,” which included presentations concerning the task group’s efforts to change mascot names, eliminate the I-word, and question US Census language labels (e.g., LEPer).
These initiatives were also summarized in an Anthropology News column and at the AAA 2016 CfHR roundtable: "Human Rights, the Academy, and Beyond: How Anthropologists Engage." Finally, the task group organized a Tweet-and-Storify project about Language and Social Justice at AAA 2016, which has since been published in the Anthropology News in January 2017.
