Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - 10:43am

The LSA is delighted to announce the winners of five CEDL Travel Grants to attend the upcoming 2020 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

These Travel Grants, administered by the LSA's Committee on Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics (CEDL), are intended to increase the participation of underrepresented ethnoracial minorities in the LSA. Each grant (maximum  $1000) will assist students in traveling to the Annual Meeting.

The winners for 2020 are:

Awardees were asked to respond to at least four of the questions below.  Click the links above or scroll down to see their answers.

1.) How did you become interested in linguistics?

2.) In what way(s) do you think that linguists can make a substantive contribution to society?

3.) Where do you see you see yourself in ten years?  What are your professional goals?

4.) What are you most looking forward to when attending the LSA conference?

5.) How might the interests and needs of ethnoracial minority students be better addressed in academia today?

6.) What special challenges do ethnoracial minorities face in academia today?

7.) What special talents do ethnoracial minorities offer academia today?

8.) Who is your professional role model?

 

Amber Camp (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa)

2) In what way(s) do you think that linguists can make a substantive contribution to society?

I think that linguists make impactful contributions to society in many different areas. Language is a large part of the human experience and linguists study every single aspect of it. Some of today’s most popular technologies, like language learning software and voice-activated intelligent virtual assistants, involve teams of linguists working behind the scenes. However, one of the biggest ways linguists are equipped to contribute to society is by educating the public about linguistic discrimination. By increasing public awareness about world languages and dialects, especially those considered non-standard, we can begin to break down the negative biases that have perpetuated stereotypes and discrimination.

4) What are you most looking forward to when attending the LSA conference?

This will be my first time attending the LSA annual meeting. I’m looking forward to meeting researchers with similar interests to mine (phonology, psycholinguistics, and suprasegmentals), and I’m also excited about networking with and learning from linguists I wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to meet at other conferences. There are so many interesting presentations and other activities on the schedule that I’m looking forward to attending. Hearing about research being done in a broad range of subfields has always been enriching and inspiring to me, particularly when I learn about new theories or methods that I can apply to my own research or share with my colleagues and students.

6) What special challenges do ethnoracial minorities face in academia today?

The first challenge that immediately comes to mind is lack of representation or visibility. If you don’t see people who look or sound like you succeeding in academia, it’s hard to envision yourself being successful. A related challenge is networking. Finding and building your community can be difficult, partly because of the lack of representation, but also because minoritized people often have experiences or obligations that people who come from more dominant or privileged backgrounds may not. Some of the many challenges that minorities face begin very early in life, and only intensify with each higher level of schooling. Because these challenges aren’t experienced the same way by all of our peers, we risk internalizing them as personal failures when they are actually systemic.

7) What special talents do ethnoracial minorities offer academia today?

Our perspectives are diverse and multidimensional, and they challenge and enrich current ways of thinking both in linguistics and in academia more broadly. It is important to highlight that ethnically, racially, and linguistically minoritized scholars do not form a homogeneous group. We are not only diverse in comparison to the dominant culture, but in other senses as well. In addition to this, we can also speak to limitations and shortcomings in academia, offering insight about how academia can be more inclusive and equitable. Lastly, many of us are multidialectal, multilingual, and/or multicultural. As a result, many minoritized scholars are experts at observing and analyzing language (and people and culture), a crucial skill for linguistics

 

Luana Lamberti (The Ohio State University)

1) How did you become interested in linguistics?

I became interested in Linguistics in my first-year as an undergrad student in Brazil. My major was in Linguistics and Literatures of English and Portuguese at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. I took an Introduction to Linguistics class and I was fascinated to learn about how language and society are intrinsically related. I also was very interested in understanding more about the internal organization that exists in language, and how amazing all the linguistic levels are interconnected and structured. 

2) In what way(s) do you think that linguists can make a substantive contribution to society?

I believe that in a more objective way, I think that through the teaching of the relationship between social prejudices and languages/language varieties. In American and Brazilian schools (at least based on my personal experience), there is still a lack of understanding of how prescriptivism is a social construct and not a universal truth on itself. The consequence of that is that linguistic prejudice is a very widespread phenomenon that people are not very aware of. Therefore, the study of languages as being systematic and how linguistic prejudice is a purely social phenomenon are advances already made in the Linguistics field that could impact the teaching of languages in schools in general. 

3) Where do you see you see yourself in ten years?  What are your professional goals?

I see myself doing what I love the most: teaching and researching about Linguistics. I intend to work in the academic field and teaching and researching in a university. I would like to create more space in academia for understudied topics in Linguistics in general. Nowadays, I specifically miss the research of Afro-varieties of Spanish, Portuguese, and English in the field. We need to better comprehend the socio-historical developments of these varieties as a way to better understand our society as well. So my long-term career goal is to conduct studies in these varieties myself and also foment research in the field by collaborating with other researchers and students once I become an academic Professor. 

4) What special talents do ethnoracial minorities offer academia today?

I think our society is increasingly asking for more minority representation in all professional careers, academic fields, and media. The consequence of that is a richness of perspectives that will help us to come up with innovative solutions for old problems. In Linguistics, it is important that we have the representation of different social groups so we can advance the field. Researches that have different backgrounds can introduce and develop the study of completely ignored topics in Linguistics, for example, and that will certainly make our theories/hypotheses better supported and they would have a greater power of applicability.

 

Jamaal Muwwakkil (University of California, Santa Barbara)

3) Where do you see you see yourself in ten years?  What are your professional goals?

In ten years, I would like to be a tenured professor. I feel that equity in higher education is vital to social justice, I would like to be in a position to structurally influence the academy towards the common good. Being a professor would afford me the flexibility and the institutional support to investigate issues relevant to the communicates I care about and meaningfully influence them.

5) How might the interests and needs of ethnoracial minority students be better addressed in academia today?

I feel it is important, in consideration of the interests and needs of ethnoracial minority students within any field or institution, to pursue not only individual interventions but also structural interventions.  I often see diversity and inclusion initiatives focuses on individual interventions that, while potentially helpful, forego addressing the cultural and institutional praxis that necessitates the individual intervention. I believe the needs of ethnoracial minority students are both immediate and recurrent across classes, so we must be invested in the development of short-term and long-term strategies to enact persistent change.  

6) What special challenges do ethnoracial minorities face in academia today?

One challenge facing ethnoracial minorities is the lack of economic clarity in academia. It has been my experience that linguists don’t like to talk about how much they make, or how they can afford to live in the places they teach. This can be quite damaging to low-income, first-generation students as they need to know how to adequately evaluate different offers. To obfuscate the economic dimension of what it is to be a linguist is to undervalue the predictable economic abuse commonly inflicted upon vulnerable populations.

7) What special talents do ethnoracial minorities offer academia today?

Ethnoracial minorities have the potential to leverage a different lens and voice than has been historically available in the academy. The relative ethnoracial homogeneity of many academic disciplines can have the effect of regarding as objective what could just be white or male (for instance). The hegemonic white gaze may be invisible and unproblematized in the absence of scholars from marked positionalities. Therefore, ethnoracial minorities offers academia a means by which to see and more fully understand itself and the world.

 

Charmaine Perry (California State University, Long Beach)

1) How did you become interested in linguistics?

I became interested in linguistics in my second year of University, always being curious about accents I heard, and how communications works in other parts of the world. It wasn’t until I was saturated in exposure in University that I knew this is the field I wanted to continue my education it.

2) in what way(s) do you think that linguists can make a substantive contribution to society?

Linguistics, in its purest form is studying Language. What better way to build bridges with those we don’t know or think we have no commonality with than by learning another’s language. Linguistics like many of the social sciences is in a sense the form of building bridges to educate the world that we are not enemies to be feared but friends and family who communicate in other tongues and hands. Educating the masses how more alike than different we are.

3) Where do you see you see yourself in ten years?  What are your professional goals?

In ten years, I see myself having already obtained not only my undergraduate degree in ASL Linguistics, but also my graduate degree in Anthropological Linguistics with a focus in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH) people groups, working on a research team about Sign Languages for UC San Diego, before applying for a PhD program at Gallaudet University.

4) What are you most looking forward to when attending the LSA conference?

I am first looking forward to the experience of this illustrious conference, meeting professionals in my future field of work, hearing about all the research that is currently going on or will start in the new year. I am also looking forward to meeting some of these wonderful professionals who know, and teach other signed languages, as well as networking.

 

Sarah Phillips (New York University)

1) How did you become interested in linguistics?

If it had not been for my undergraduate advisor at the University of Georgia, I probably would not be in linguistics today. I went into my undergraduate studies pursuing chemistry but quickly lost interest. I decided to meet my advisor before doing the paperwork to change majors. While discussing my intentions of switching from chemistry to international affairs, she recognized my interest in language  as I was taking two foreign language  classes at that time. She encouraged  me to take an introductory linguistics course, and that was it.

2) Where  do you see you see yourself in ten years? What are your professional goals?

Ten years from now, I see myself working towards tenure in a faculty position. I hope to have built a lab with undergraduate and graduate students where we investigate the nature of bilingual competence and how that can inform theories about language.

3) What special talents do ethno-racial minorities offer academia today?

I think people from minority ethnic/racial groups  possess a kind of creativity that can push academia in new and exciting directions.  Engaging in a space  where one feels  like  the out-group often requires presenting one’s ideas, rooted in less-understood  experiences, in a way that is widely accessible.  It takes this kind of creativity to illustrate the value of our experiences within academia.

4) How might the interests and needs of ethno-racial minority students be better  addressed in academia today?

I believe an important step towards meeting the interests and needs of ethno-racial minority students is to recognize what each of us can offer the field and in turn what the field can offer each of us.  My interests and needs are different  from other African-American and Asian-American students as we all differ in experience.  When more established academics engage in conversation about their interests and needs as well as my interests and needs, mutually beneficial relationships can develop and in turn produce fruitful  research.

5) What are you most looking forward to when attending  the LSA conference?

The best part of every LSA is that  feeling of being tired and inspired each day.  I have attended two LSA meetings  so far, and I always found myself working harder after learning from other attendees’ presentations.  However, this year, I am presenting for the first time! I am looking forward to how much more inspired I will be after discussing some of my work with whomever comes to my poster.