Linguistics for Social Justice Colloquium Series Successfully Concluded
The 2023 Linguistics for Social Justice Colloquium Series, organized by Dr. Jill Hallett (Visiting Lecturer of Linguistics), connected UIC students with the research areas, efforts and tools for conducting linguistic research for social justice. Dr. Korinta Maldonado (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) described collaborative community efforts toward founding the Pixan Konob’ Q’anjob’al Language Justice Collective to ensure that Central Illinois' roughly 8000 speakers of Q'anjob'al and other Mayan languages receive information critical to their health, safety, education, and well-being. Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) shared her ongoing research in experimental sociolinguistics, raciolinguistics, lexicography, and machine learning, with a focus on raising awareness of bias in linguistic datasets resulting from institutionalized linguistic discrimination.
