In 2019, SSILA began requiring authors submitting abstracts to the Annual Meeting to include a statement on social outcomes/impacts/implications of the work presented, whether positive or negative, immediate or potential. This initiative was adopted as part of an ongoing change within our field that strives to increase our accountability as individual researchers and members of professional societies in terms of the implications our work may have for members of sovereign Indigenous nations (whether we ourselves are members of Indigenous communities or outsiders). The SSILA Executive Committee recognizes that research is never carried out in a socio-political vacuum and takes the position that research on Indigenous languages should occur with a strong awareness of its real or potential social impacts. Discussion of those impacts in turn needs to be part of how the research is presented and evaluated. In a survey conducted in 2020, SSILA members expressed strong support for this requirement. At the same time, there was a generalized call for the development of guidelines for its successful implementation moving forward.
In response to this mandate, an ad-hoc committee was formed in the fall of 2021 to develop guidelines and resources for abstract writers and abstract reviewers. The committee (Aaron Broadwell, Gabriela Caballero, Wesley Y. Leonard, and Keren Rice) selected a sample of successful abstracts from prior meetings and developed additional examples to illustrate possible social impacts, both positive and negative, that might develop from a broad range of research contexts. While not exhaustive, these illustrations and examples are meant as a starting point for abstract writers and reviewers. These resources are now available on the SSILA webpage in the Meetings pages, under Resources for Social Impacts & Outcomes.
We acknowledge that social implications vary tremendously across contexts, and that a given project’s implications can be assessed only within the frame of the relevant community’s language practices and ideologies, regional norms, relevant disciplinary and institutional protocols, and other socio-political variables specific to each case. Abstracts writers are thus asked to situate the broader significance of their proposals within the specific contexts in which they operate, with particular emphasis on the needs, intellectual tools, and cultural protocols of the Indigenous communities they work with or who are represented in the research. Successful implementation of the requirement does not presuppose preconceived notions of what the broader significance should be, but rather involves linking broader impacts/implications, even if hypothetical, to attested needs and issues that language communities deem to be important. By extension, this requirement also serves to document that abstract authors are aware of communities’ needs and concerns, and that both inform the research.
In some cases, broader social impacts are not easily separable from the scientific objectives of specific projects (e.g., those focusing on language revitalization, reclamation, pedagogical issues, or language activism). In other cases, social implications/outcomes are better framed in terms of the larger context in which research is situated. For example, language documentation projects often include development of resources for community use, community literacy work, training, etc. Some SSILA paper abstracts may arise out of larger projects, and describe smaller projects whose social impacts are unclear when considered in isolation. In these cases, providing an explanation of the larger project from which the abstract proposal arises helps the reader of the abstract situate this research within the broader context of how the work occurs.
As stated above, these guidelines and examples are only a starting point of a developing repository of resources that we can collectively develop moving forward with the input from members working across different regions, disciplines, and perspectives. We hope these will be helpful.
All the best,
Aaron Broadwell, Gabriela Caballero, Wesley Y. Leonard, and Keren Rice