ICLDC8: 8th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation Online Honolulu, HI, United States, March 2-5, 2023

CONFERENCE THEME: CENTERING JUSTICE IN LANGUAGE WORK

Attention to aspects of justice as a social responsibility has been growing in many fields in recent years. Our field should be no exception: the reasons for language shift and loss worldwide are arguably tied to historical and contemporary injustices and inequality. Furthermore, issues of justice affecting speakers and language communities are not just linguistic: a growing body of research shows that linguistic justice intersects with justice in the environmental, health, legal, political, economic, and educational realms.

While the inherently sociopolitical nature of language work is evident to many practitioners, justice goals are often considered by-products that are secondary in importance to the more traditional scholastic aims of documentary linguistics. Therefore, we believe it is time for the field of language documentation and conservation to develop a framework that establishes justice as both the starting point and end goal of our work. How might such an approach reframe the traditional pursuits of documentation? Could it potentially invert the field’s current motivations and methodologies, asserting language justice as the ultimate goal, and traditional academic pursuits as an expected outcome of such work?

Our field has not yet held an international conversation on achieving justice within language documentation and conservation, what role language workers play in achieving justice in intersecting realms, and how justice can critically inform, and reform, best practices in language documentation and conservation work. We propose to make the ICLDC8 a venue for this critical and timely conversation. Importantly, we see ICLDC8 as an excellent opportunity for practitioners to build relationships and develop the social infrastructure necessary for working toward a justice-driven model of language work.

The conference program will feature Keynote presentations, Talk Story and Workshop sessions, papers, and posters. The He ʻŌlelo Ola Hilo Field Study, showcasing Hawaiian language K-20 immersion programs, will be integrated into the conference schedule.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We will have two separate Calls for Proposals:

• Workshops and Talk Story sessions - deadline August 1, 2022
• General sessions (Papers, Posters) - deadline October 2, 2022

For details about each Call for Proposals type and its requirements and timelines, please see the Call for Proposals section of our conference website. We look forward to your submissions and participation at the conference!

ICLDC 2023: General Session proposals (papers & posters - deadline: October 2, 2022, 11:59 pm, Hawai‘i time)

While we especially welcome abstracts that address the conference theme, we also welcome abstracts on other subjects in language documentation and conservation, which may include but are not limited to:

• Archiving and mobilizing language materials 
• Ethical issues
• Indigenous language education
• Indigenous sign languages
• Language and its relation to health and well being
• Language planning
• Language reclamation and revitalization
• Language work in the era of covid-19
• Lexicography, grammar, orthography and corpus design
• Multidisciplinary language documentation
• Recognizing relationships
• Successful models of documentation
• Technology in documentation and reclamation
• Topics in areal language documentation
• Training and capacity building in language work

Presentation formats

Papers will be allowed 20 minutes for presentation. Papers will be pre-recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel before the ICLDC. During the ICLDC, paper presenters will be present for live, moderated Q&A sessions online.

Posters will be digital and on display asynchronously throughout the entire conference. There will also be a synchronous Poster Session in which poster presenters will be able to reply to questions and interact online with other attendees.

All paper and poster presentations will be archived in ScholarSpace, the University of Hawaiʻi Repository, for continued viewing after the end of the ICLDC.

Proposal submission

• Abstracts should describe the content of the proposed paper or poster and clearly address the proposed topic’s actual or potential social impacts, outcomes or implications (400 word limit, not including references). 
• File format: upload your abstract as an MS Word or PDF file. Name your file using the first author’s last name, e.g., “author.pdf.”
• Language: Abstracts should be submitted in English, but presentations can be in any language. We particularly welcome presentations in languages of the region discussed. 
• Authors may submit no more than one individual and one co-authored proposal (including participation in a Workshop or Talk Story Session proposal), or no more than two co-authored proposals. In no case may an author submit more than one individually-authored proposal.
• Proposals for papers and posters are due by October 2, 2022, with notification of acceptance by November 1, 2022.

ICLDC 2023: Workshop and Talk Story proposals (deadline: August 1, 2022, 11:59 pm, Hawai‘i time)

Following a format introduced at the ICLDC 2017, we are including multiple 90-minute blocks on each day of the conference to be dedicated to two alternative conference activities: Talk Story Sessions and Workshops. 

Talk Story Sessions 

Introduced at ICLDC 2017 in response to participant feedback, ICLDC 2023 will again offer Talk Story sessions. These discussions will be led by an expert discussant and limited to 20-30 attendees per session. Each Talk Story will be repeated on different days of the conference, allowing ample opportunity for conference attendees to participate in the Talk Story Sessions of their choice. Talk Story sessions are meant to be fully interactive for participants, rather than a one-directional presentation of information. This format is particularly appropriate for discussing relationships, how we foster them, maintain them, and better understand their role in language reclamation and language documentation.

Workshops

We also welcome proposals for Workshops on topics broadly relating to the conference theme. Each 90-minute workshop will be repeated on different days of the conference, allowing multiple opportunities for interested attendees to participate. Workshops will accommodate a larger number of participants and are intended to be more presentational and instructional in style than the Talk Story sessions. 

NSF support details

Thanks to generous support from the US National Science Foundation Dynamic Language Infrastructure - NEH Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL), we are able to offer honoraria up to US $600 (subject to taxation) for each selected Workshop and Talk Story Session. In the event that a Workshop or Talk Story Session is jointly presented by more than one individual, the presenter team will inform the ICLDC Executive Committee how to divide the award across the presenters. 

As a condition of acceptance, Workshop and Talk Story Session presenters must acknowledge support of the National Science Foundation in their presentations and future iterations of their research.

Proposal submission

• Abstracts should describe the content of the proposed Workshop or Talk Story, indicating how it relates to the conference theme. Successful abstracts will clearly address the proposed topic’s actual or potential social impacts, outcomes or implications. Abstracts should be no more than 400 words in length, not including references. 
• Talk Story Session and Workshop presenters will have access to the ICLDC’s online video conferencing features, and plenty of technical support and training from our Student Steering Committee, if necessary. In your abstract, please address the feasibility of holding your Talk Story Session or Workshop in an online, virtual format.
• Biography: Please include a 100-word biography describing the qualifications of each presenter. 
• File format: upload your abstract as an MS Word or PDF file. Name your file using the first author’s last name, e.g., “author.pdf.”
• Language: Abstracts should be submitted in English, but presentations can be in any language. We particularly welcome presentations in languages of the region discussed. 
• Authors may submit no more than one individual and one co-authored proposal (including participation in a paper or poster proposal), or no more than two co-authored proposals. In no case may an author submit more than one individually-authored proposal.
• Proposals for the NSF-sponsored Workshops and Talk Story Sessions are due by August 1, 2022, with notification of acceptance by September 1, 2022.

Timeline

• May 2022: Call for Proposals announced
• August 1, 2022: Proposals for Workshops and Talk Story Sessions deadline
• September 1, 2022: Notification of acceptance to Workshops and Talk Story Sessions
• October 2, 2022: Proposal deadline for general papers and posters
• November 1, 2022: Notification of acceptance for general papers and posters
• November 1, 2022: Early registration opens
• January 31, 2023: Early registration deadline; late registration opens February 1
• March 2 - March 5, 2023: 8th ICLDC

Executive Committee

• Andrea Berez-Kroeker, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
• Shelece Easterday, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
• Ha‘alilio Williams-Solomon, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
• Jim Yoshioka, National Foreign Language Resource Center

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to icldc@hawaii.edu