Community Linguist Award

The LSA has just announced a new award for what we’re calling Community Linguists, meaning members of (usually) endangered language communities who do outstanding work for their languages, either as a native speaker consultant working with a linguist or as a community member working on revitalization of their language. The call for nominations is at:

http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/call-nominations-excellence-community-linguistics-award

More information about what groups of people are intended for this, as well as about how to nominate someone, is available there.

If you work with an outstanding person of one of these groups, please check on this new opportunity to recognize their work.  If you know someone who works with a potential nominee, please let them know about it.

The award is not limited to the USA: the award aims to recognize community linguists from any area of the world.

The deadline for nominations is July 1st each year (beginning in 2013); nominations will be reviewed by a committee comprising members of the Ethics Committee and the Committee for the Preservation of Endangered Languages.

New Ethics CORE Initiative

The Ethics Committee recently received the following email with information about the initiative and a request for materials. The Ethics CORE library is funded by the National Science Foundation. We are posting the full email here because it contains links that may be relevant to the LSA membership. Their page on language sciences can be found here; it contains links to frequently cited papers on ethics in the language sciences, particularly in applied linguistics and linguistic fieldwork.

Conference on Language Ethics

From the LingAnth Blog:

International workshop: Language Ethics as a Field of Inquiry

November 11-12, 2011

ITHQ (3535 St. Denis), Montreal

Convenors: Daniel Weinstock and Yael Peled

The workshop “Language Ethics as a Field of Inquiry” is an innovative and a first-of-its-kind attempt to identify, conceptualise and explore the social and political ethics of human language as a distinct field of intellectual inquiry, similarly to other distinct domains of ethics such as the ethics of war, bioethics, business ethics and environmental ethics.

The workshop brings together diverse scholarly perspectives from leading experts in politics, philosophy, linguistics, history and economics, in order to explore language ethics in a strong transdisciplinary environment. It therefore sets out to identify the ways in which the intrinsic plurality and complexity of this emerging field of inquiry may be approached, defined and studied in a systematic and dedicated manner.

Programme:

Friday November 11

9:00            Greetings and Opening Remarks

Session I: Language Ethics – Definitions, Contexts and Approaches

9:30            Dan Avnon (Political Science, Hebrew University)

What is (or ‘are’) Language Ethics?

10:15             Arash Abizadeh (Political Science, McGill)

Words versus the Public Thing: Verbal Threats to the Rousseauist Republic

11:00                   Break

11:15             Luisa Maffi (Terralingua)

Earth of Languages, Languages of the Earth: Towards a Biocultural Ethics for the World’s Languages

12.00                   Lunch

Session II: The Normative Theorising of Language Policy

13:00           Idil Boran (Philosophy, York)

Language, Institutions and Political Theory

13:45             Jacob T. Levy (Political Science, McGill)

The Language of Manners and the Manners of Language

14:30                    Break

Session III: Linguistic Justice

15:00                   Alan Patten (Political Science, Princeton)

Language Preservation, Fairness and Language Rights

15:45             Helder de Schutter (Political and Social Theory, Leuven)

Intralinguistic Justice

Saturday November 12

Session IV: Global Linguistic Justice

9:30            Suzanne Romaine (English, Oxford)

Towards Sustainable and Equitable Human Development: Why Language Matters

10:15             Daniel Weinstock (Philosophy, Montreal)

Is Language Death Necessarily Unjust? Three Arguments

11:00             Break

11:15             Tom Ricento (Education, Calgary)

Language Policy, Political Theory and English as a ‘Global’ Language

12:00                   Lunch

Session V: The Economics of Linguistic Diversity

13:00            David Robichaud (Philosophy, Ottawa)

Language Rights and the Costs of Language Diversity

13:45             Francois Grin (Economics, Geneva)

Is “Diversity” an Operational Concept for Language Policy?

14:30                   Break

Session VI: Language Ethics as a Field of Inquiry

15:00            General Discussion

16:30            Conclusion

Participation and registration:

Registration is free of charge but is essential, since the number of available places is limited. To register, please send a message expressing your interest toyael.a.peled@gmail.com. For directions and map of the workshop venue see http://www.ithq.qc.ca/en/hotel/pour-nous-joindre.php.

American Anthropological Association core ethical principles posted online for public review and comment

Lise Dobrin writes:

After tinkering with its Code of Ethics on and off for years, in 2008 the American Anthropological Association established a Task Force to provide a comprehensive review the Code and propose revisions in a more systematic way. Although the process was originally expected to be completed by November 2010, the research and reflection demanded by such an ambitious project has (understandably) caused the timetable to expand; the new draft code and associated report will be submitted to the AAA Executive Board this November, after which the AAA membership will have the opportunity to vote on the final draft.

Besides being refreshingly proactive (the American anthropological community is very good at monitoring itself and exploding in controversy over the ethical comportment of its members), one of the most exciting aspects of the Code review is the consultative nature of the process the Task Force has adopted. Early in its review the Task Force conducted a member survey to help them understand how anthropologists were using the current Code, where they felt it was insufficient, and what they believed they needed a code for. Now, as they begin thinking about revisions, they are trying to identify core statements or principles (“Be open and honest regarding your work. Make your results accessible.“, “Balance competing ethical obligations due collaborators and affected parties“), and are asking for our help in crafting those. They are posting their thoughts on the AAA blog, principle by principle, and soliciting comments/feedback from anyone who cares enough about anthropological ethics to respond. The process is continuing for another few months, so keep checking back to see what you think!

Yale’s Human Research Participants site

Yale has just released a new set of pages for human research participants.

The new site recognizes the collaborative efforts required among members of the Yale community in protecting human research participants.  It is designed to provide informational materials by user category: Investigators and Research Staff, IRB Members and Staff, Research Participants, and Yale Research Affiliates. Each user category contains relevant tools and information that have been expanded and enhanced from materials on the existing IRB sites.

It’s important to note that the HRPP policies and procedures have undergone an extensive process of review and revision, resulting in the creation of many new procedures, checklists and guidance documents.  These documents reflect many of the questions frequently asked of the IRB by researchers and are designed to help users understand the critical components of conducting and reviewing human research. 

The site has quite extensive sets of links and resources for PIs, research participants and others.