The Principle of Error Correction (PEC) holds that changing people’s harmful misconceptions about language can reduce the effects of racist beliefs and practices in society (Labov 1982). In a recent piece, Lewis (2018) critiques this claim in asserting that getting rid of ignorance does little to rid society of racism. Rather, we need to look at how society allocates privilege and status based on racial hierarchies. Considering Lewis’ proposal, this chapter asks whether trying to change people’s ideologies about African American Language (AAL) is an efficient strategy for combating racist beliefs about African Americans and whether there are better ways to achieve this. I question my positionality as a European American teacher educator working in the Bronx and share my ambivalence about the utility of the PEC. I discuss a series blog responses by New York City public school teachers of color which frame the sociolinguistic categorization of AAL patterns as part of systematic and age-old attempt to set apart and belittle the cultural practices of black Americans. These reactions raise questions about how we as sociolinguists construct AAL as a bounded set of practices (Makoni & Pennycook 2005).

In this chapter we locate the question of ‘radical pedagogy’ in the current moment: a time in which insurgent social movements (such as #rhodesmustfall, #metoo, and #blacklivesmatter) are raising pertinent questions of representation, accountability and justice in society as well as at universities. We reflect on our own pedagogical-scholarly practice, and ask whether it is possible to separate language activism from other kinds of social-justice/decolonial/anti-colonial activism. In answering this question we draw on the Black racial tradition(s), and we emphasize the importance of being attuned to one’s local context. In our case this means the settler-colonial realities of post-apartheid South Africa, and the Imperial university. Being an activist-scholar means that one has to be prepared to engage in ‘difficult conversations’, with other scholars, but also with students and the wider community. These are conversations that are grounded in a willingness to ‘unlearn’ and to engage in ‘dialogics’ (Paolo Freire, 1968). One area where these ‘difficult conversations’ have gained traction is around questions of citation and curriculum: How can we teach and use citation practices that are ethically responsible? Can we develop an ethics of citation, and create a curriculum that is ethically sound?

The field of language endangerment and documentary linguistics, which developed in the last thirty years in response to massive global language endangerment and loss, has introduced high ethical standards for linguists who work in endangered language communities. These ethical standards are based on ideas of empowerment of language communities and their involvement in collaborative work (Cameron et al. 1997; Rice 2004; Yamada 2007; Leonard and Haynes 2010). Relying on the author’s own experiences with community-oriented language documentation in small endangered language enclaves in Croatia over the period of more than ten years, this paper problematizes some of the assumptions of this approach to language documentation and elaborate on the meaning, obstacles to and possible and desirable extent of linguists’ activism in this area of linguistic practice. In particular, the discussion revolves around the issues of disciplinary ideologies, scholars’ positionality, and community representation while illustrative examples come from an inventory of the author’s own dilemmas and actions. It is proposed that definitions of and expectations for language activism and advocacy, like the notions of collaboration and ‘giving back’ in documentary linguistics, will benefit from remaining flexible and highly responsive to the social nature of communities and sociohistorical contexts in which linguists are doing their work.

This chapter focuses on the authors’ personal experience challenging some of the dominant language ideologies in Croatia’s public sphere. We first provide a brief overview of the language situation in Croatia with special emphasis on the prevailing conceptualizations of language(s) in the works of established language ideologues and authors of usage guides, found in popular language-focused television and radio programs as well. We then move on to classifying and addressing some of the positive and also negative (print, audio, online) reactions from the conservative linguistic circles and their ideologies and discourse strategies following the publication of our book Jeziku je svejedno [Language could care less, 2019, Zagreb: Sandorf], in which we carried out a detailed qualitative critical analysis of prescriptivist discourse in Croatia, most notably as found in contemporary usage guides. Finally, we outline some of our ideas for future activist work with the aim of deconstructing harmful language ideologies, empowering average speakers and reducing the level of linguistic insecurity and self-hatred.

Ethnographic and discursive approaches have become more common in Language Policy research, focusing on social actors and how their actions are embedded in and shape social structures. Implementations of LP research have been addressed by problematising the notion of research as a neutral endeavour, a process spurred by the increasing focus on multilingualism and a criticism of Eurocentric worldviews.Researchers in the field of multilingualism are often motivated by a concern with social issues, but often this is accounted for in an implicit manner or not addressed at all. I present a nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004) to show how my engagement as a researcher and activist shaped the standardisation process of Kven (a Finnic minoritized language in Northern Norway) and discuss some of the dilemmas I faced, as there were tensions concerning the standardisation process (Lane 2014).All ethnographic research will lead to change, both on immediate and longer time scales. When engaging in standardisation processes, researchers shape both such processes and the outcomes. However, this is not a unidirectional process, as such engagement will also become a part of the historical body of the researcher. We shape the field, but we are also shaped by the field.

A major challenge facing South African sociolinguistics today is to find ways to engage with activists and be activists in reconstructing meaningful intervention in public debates about problems of language and multilingualism in a post-apartheid democratic context. To tackle this problem, in this chapter, I propose the idea that sociolinguists doing the work of activism, with language activists, in the public, are (1) invested in the artistic representation of linkages between language reinvention and new relationalities, and (2) highlighting, documenting and framing interventionist debates around language. To illustrate this idea, and the related points, I draw on my activist work with Afrikaaps ´language´ activists in the advancement of a public sociolinguistics that concern two broad strategies of intervention: one as a form of rear-guard intervention and the other as a vanguard one. I analyze how activists working with the Afrikaaps ´language´ movement concerns developing a new perspective on language based in actions of reinvention and the goal of establishing common relationality through multilingual communication. Following the analysis, I offer a number of conclusions on how public sociolinguists could continue to cultivate and sustain such activism embedded in the history of language formation, reinvention and future.

Indigenous communities across the Arctic are undergoing massive cultural disruption due to a nexus of factors. This paper addresses the multiple roles of an outsider linguist in these communities, where language shift has become both the symbol and symptom of cultural change and loss. Faced with such social disruption, local revitalization efforts are models of resilience and adaptability in Indigenous-driven efforts to build vitality and sustainability. Climate change has transformed nearly all aspects of life: hunting and fishing are fundamentally changed due to thinning sea ice (making traditional hunting and travel routes unsafe); melting permafrost has resulted in flooding and habitat destruction, and resulting in the decimation of reindeer, elk and sea mammal populations, to name just a few. Such changes force Indigenous peoples to urban centers, where they find new neighbors and languages, often living as invisible minorities alongside both local majority peoples and recent immigrants, who have come seeking new opportunities. Language shift goes hand-in-hand with cultural change, and speakers of Arctic Indigenous languages are undergoing shift to the majority colonial languages.Indigenous communities across the Arctic are undergoingmassive cultural disruption due to a nexus of factors. This paper addresses themultiple roles of an outsider linguist in these communities, where languageshift has become both the symbol and symptom of cultural change and loss. Facedwith such social disruption, local revitalization efforts are models ofresilience and adaptability in Indigenous-driven efforts to build vitality andsustainability. Climate change has transformed nearly all aspects of life:hunting and fishing are fundamentally changed due to thinning sea ice (makingtraditional hunting and travel routes unsafe); melting permafrost has resultedin flooding and habitat destruction, and resulting in the decimation ofreindeer, elk and sea mammal populations, to name just a few. Such changesforce Indigenous peoples to urban centers, where they find new neighbors and languages,often living as invisible minorities alongside both local majority peoples andrecent immigrants, who have come seeking new opportunities. Language shift goeshand-in-hand with cultural change, and speakers of Arctic Indigenous languages areundergoing shift to the majority colonial languages.

This chapter lays the foundational framework for the relation between language, culture, and identity. Through an analogy, it illuminates the developmental parallels between heritage language and the rhizomatic growth of bamboo. Introducing the method of serial narrative ethnography, it underscores the significance of narrative knowing across the lifespan as a means for scientific understanding and the power of multiple stories through voices. It also presents an outline of the book.

Chapter 6 portrays two adolescent speakers of Chinese as a heritage language and their respective families.  Drawing upon interview data as well as face-to-face conversational data in everyday interactions, it situates the adolescents’ attitude toward the Chinese language in the contexts of talking about their respective families in terms of values, behavioral patterns, and accents, talking for their families as they interpret and translate from Chinese to English for their parents and polish their parents’ English in everyday social encounters, and talking with their families in digital communication across three generations. It explores second-generation immigrant children’s perceptions of their parents’ attitudes toward child rearing, college preparation, and career choices. It also investigates the impact of the parents’ triumphs and challenges in their immigration experience on the children’s language choices.