📢 Job Alert: Postdoc at University of Amsterdam - Amserdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
Estimation & Implications of Invisible Languages on the Internet
* 20-month full-time, starting Jan 2026
* Research #LinguisticJustice, build tools, lead workshops
Work with faculty, international non-profits ( @PublicKnowledgeProject, @RespondCrisis Translation, and @wikimediafoundation ) and language communities!
📚 Wai Wai educators and the making of a community-based grammar
The Wai Wai are an Indigenous people of the Karib language family who live in the Wayamu Territory—across parts of northern Brazil, as well as neighboring regions of Guyana and Suriname. Their history includes forced displacements, interethnic contact, and continued resistance to external pressures.
Since the 1970s, the Wai Wai have returned to ancestral lands in Brazil, establishing villages like Mapuera and Jatapuzinho. Through their own association (APIW), they defend territorial rights and lead initiatives grounded in cultural and linguistic autonomy.
One such initiative is the creation of a school grammar written in the Wai Wai language by Wai Wai teachers. Based on oral histories and actual language use, this grammar was developed collectively between 2014 and 2019 in training workshops and educational gatherings.
The process is documented in the article:
“Wai Wai Pedagogical Grammar: reflections and methodological practices on developing didactic material for an Indigenous community”.
The publication highlights how education becomes a tool of resistance—connecting language, memory, and self-determination.
🪶 Read the full article:
👉 https://doi.org/10.25189/2675-4916.2025.v6.n3.id810
#IndigenousLanguages #LanguageDocumentation #WaiWai #LinguisticJustice #OpenAccess #DecolonizingEducation
Language isn't just about communication—it's about power.
We're diving deep into the psychology of linguistic oppression. From authoritarian regimes that "disappear" people to corporate bans on words like "diversity," we examine how controlling vocabulary narrows thought.
#PsyberSpace #LinguisticJustice #PsychologyPodcast #LanguageAndPower #ListenNow #CriticalThinking #MediaLiteracy #PsychologyOfResistance
The Power of Language: Unveiling the Psychology of Linguistic ControlIn this episode of PsyberSpace, host Leslie Poston digs into the psychology behind the control and censorship of language, exami...
@ianturton You’ve been used as an enabler in a situation that reminds me of what Philippe Van Parijs describes in Linguistic Justice as the “maxi-min language use” — the language of maximal minimal competence. Nice example!
In Europe and throughout the world, competence in English is spreading at a speed never achieved by any language in human history. This apparently irresistible growing dominance of English is frequently perceived and sometimes indignantly denounced as being grossly unjust. Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World starts off arguing that the dissemination of competence in a common lingua franca is a process to be welcomed and accelerated, most fundamentally because it provides the struggle for greater justice in Europe and in the world with an essential weapon: a cheap medium of communication and of mobilization. However, the resulting linguistic situation can plausibly be regarded as unjust in three distinct senses. Firstly, the adoption of one natural language as the lingua franca implies that its native speakers are getting a free ride by benefiting costlessly from the learning effort of others. Secondly, they gain greater opportunities as a result of competence in their native language becoming a more valuable asset. And thirdly the privilege systematically given to one language fails to show equal respect for the various languages with which different portions of the population concerned identify. The book spells out the corresponding interpretations of linguistic justice as cooperative justice, distributive justice and parity of esteem, respectively. And it discusses systematically a wide range of policies that might help achieve linguistic justice in these three senses, from a linguistic tax on Anglophone countries to the banning of dubbing or the linguistic territoriality principle. Against this background, the book argues that linguistic diversity is not valuable in itself but it will nonetheless need to be protected as a by-product of the pursuit of linguistic justice as parity of esteem.
Public Knowledge Project
Cadernos de Linguística
leslie
Social Movement Technologies
Jan Adriaenssens
Cecilia Gialdini