Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Language Evolution

Savithry Namboodiripad, Gareth Roberts, Felicia Bisnath, Chrissy Cuskley, Sean Roberts, Molly Flaherty, Tessa Verhoef

Workshop homepage: https://edile.herokuapp.com

A number of organizations related to our language evolution community have called on their members to reckon with systemic bias in the histories of their fields, scholarship practices, and current patterns of inclusion (see statements from EvoLang, ProtoLang, the Cultural Evolution Society, EHBEA, the Evolution Society and the Linguistic Society of America). Building on these calls to action, we seek to bring this conversation to the Joint Conference on Language Evolution.

Racial bias is particularly relevant for our field because of the history of ideas in both evolution and linguistics. Theories from the field of evolution have been invoked in the past to make value judgments about the sophistication or maturity of languages and cultures, and to justify racist ideologies. Alongside this, it is well-documented that the field of linguistics emerged from and has been intertwined with colonialist and white supremacist practices. For many outside the field, these are still salient ideas associated with the study of language evolution.

Within the field of language evolution, by contrast, the need to consider human history on an evolutionary timescale makes clear that conceptions of race are complex, culturally constructed, locally contextualised, and often imposed by one group onto others. Language evolution is a topic of universal interest, and diversity of all kinds is a key resource for explaining it. This applies to other aspects of diversity such as class, gender, sexuality, nationality, linguistic background, and disability.

This poster session aims to give space for direct discussion of this. We are interested in submissions on topics broadly related to equity and diversity in language evolution, such as:

• Historical perspectives, for example, the history of race and racism in the study of language evolution.

• Surveys of diversity within the field.

• Empirical studies on language evolution that address issues of equity, inclusion and diversity. For example, methodologies for researching creoles, sign languages and/or systems that have been referred to as 'emerging'.

• Surveys of perceptions and attitudes to language evolution from outside of the field. For example, what key questions do ordinary members of the public want us to address?

• Knowledge transfer projects, for example how knowledge from the field of language evolution can be used to address inequality.

• Reports on initiatives to improve inclusion and access to the field.