Call for Abstracts
SAIL will take place in person only
Special Session: ADVANCING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGIES
Indigenous languages are critical components of Indigenous systems of knowledge and practice and are vital to Indigenous resilience. Yet state-of-the-art language technology is primarily built for English and a few other languages. Some topics we are interested in exploring in this Special Session include:
- How are communities balancing interests in new technologies with concerns about data sovereignty and sustainability?
- What kinds of language-related technologies are addressing key needs for community members, and where are the gaps?
- How can community members get training and support in technology development so that applications and the data that sustain them can stay in the community?
A workshop on Advancing Indigenous Technologies will be co-convened with SAIL. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for invited participants (primarily representatives of Indigenous language communities) to share their technology needs and challenges.
If you are interested in attending this workshop, please contact Dr. Amy Fountain at avf@arizona.edu
General Sessions: Revitalization, documentation, description & theory*
The General parasessions welcome papers on language revitalization and documentation, and descriptive and/or theoretical work that draw their data from community-based participatory research.
* In line with our goals of reaching out to Indigenous communities, we encourage scholars to present their descriptive & theoretical work that aligns with the community efforts to revitalize/maintain their language.
Poster Session
We welcome research on any topic covering American Indian languages (e.g., language documentation, description & theory, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, fieldwork, language revitalization, teaching pedagogy, language policy, community-based programs, use of digital technologies for language documentation and language revitalization). Indigenous communities are also encourage to present and promote their language revitalization/maintenance initiatives!
Submission Process:
We are accepting proposals for three types of presentations: research papers, panels, and poster presentations.
Abstracts should be up to 500 words or less (excluding examples and/or references). Abstracts should include the following information:
Title of paper
Name of author(s) and Institutional/Tribal affiliation (if any)
Author status (undergraduate/graduate student; post-doc; faculty; and/or member of an Indigenous community)
Session you wish to present (special session / general session / poster session)
Oral presentations will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Special Session and General Session are limited to 30 minutes. The Special Session and General Session will take place at the same time.
The Poster Session will run for approximately 90 minutes. It provides an opportunity for more open-ended, two-way communication with the audiences (undergraduate students are invited to submit abstracts for this session).
Please submit your abstract in PDF format by email to sail.uarizona@gmail.com (with the subject: “Abstract - SAIL 2025")
Submission deadline: Tuesday, December 31st, 2024
Authors will be notified of acceptance by January 24, 2025.
If you have any questions, please contact us at sail.uarizona@gmail.com
We hope to see you in Tucson!
SAIL 2025 Organizing Committee