Bridging Critically Oriented Linguistic Research and Welfare Practices: Addressing Contemporary Challenges and Social Injustices
Bridging Critically Oriented Linguistic Research and Welfare Practices: Addressing Contemporary Challenges and Social Injustices
Tuesday, 8 July 2025: 13:00-14:45
Location: ASJE027 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
RC25 Language and Society (host committee) Language: English
In times marked by geopolitical unrest, climate change, and increasing social injustices, new social challenges arise for welfare institutions to address. Moreover, emerging authoritarianism and the spread of anti-democratic movements shifting the linguistic landscape, underscores the necessity for social science research to examine the political and social responses launched to meet these challenges. A common way to address this need is to evaluate and measure the effects of the campaigns, programs, and methods implemented. However, such research is often entangled in the same power networks of governing that it aims to scrutinize; frequently funded by government departments and guided by specific remits or research questions tied to a certain ideological discourse or "knowledge." In response, critically oriented linguistic research has contributed important perspectives and empirical studies highlighting the multifaceted relationship between knowledge/power and political/social responses, also emphasizing the growing need to acknowledging silenced voices. Yet such research is rarely perceived as practically useful by welfare professionals. Similarly, critical researchers feel their work has insignificant impact on policy and practice.
This session invites empirically informed contributions that discuss how critically oriented linguistic research can be developed to meet contemporary challenges, improving policy and practice targeting social injustice.Contributions may include, but are not limited to, issues touching on theoretical, methodological, and communicative aspects of the research process.
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Oral Presentations