Linguistics for everyone: Engaging a broader public for the scientific study of language

摘要: The “Linguistics for Everyone”(LfE) project grew out of a desire to share our excitement about communicating the importance and fascination of linguistics to diverse public audiences, and to encourage our colleagues to do the same. Too often, we find a lay person’s response to learning that we study language is to ask how many foreign languages we speak, and then worry that we will correct their grammar. Few people outside the field appreciate their own implicit knowledge of grammar and the central contribution the scientific study of language makes in our daily lives and in many fields of knowledge. In order to change the public perception of linguistics and spark greater interest in it, we suggest that linguists collaborate across subfields and with different disciplines to create opportunities to share what they do and why they do it with general audiences. To make programs in venues outside academia as effective as possible, scholars need to equip themselves with tools that help them communicate clearly and vividly and make their messages relevant to diverse audiences (See Alda Center; also AAAS, 2013; 2014; Bigham et al., 2015). We hope our symposium helps fellow acquisition scholars see how their own work can create greater public awareness of their science, and shows them how engaged research does not take them away from their work, but rather can advance it.LfE efforts also respond to increasing pressures on the research community to emphasize the societal relevance of their work and when possible, to use their research to further a public agenda (“America competes,” 2010; NSF, 2014). They are also enjoined to …