(subtitle automatically generated) Hi and welcome everybody.
Thank you for being with us at the end of what had been two very rich days of discussion and presentation, and I've enjoyed very much what I've been able to be a part of and I hope you have too.
And it is my privilege now to introduce our final keynote speaker, Ben to Eileen Swanson.
But that is professor of Second Language acquisition and Scandinavian linguistics at the University of Oslo.
She was the initiator and 1st Deputy Director of Multiling, the Center for Multilingualism and Society across the Lifespan, which is a Norwegian Research Center of excellence.
Bet that has carried out research and published extensively on multilingual socialization among children.
And adults and young people.
Linguistic practices and identity constructions in multilingual urban spaces.
Her recent work includes a focus on citizen sociolinguistics and meant that truly stands out for her work to engage new audiences and participants in linguistic research. Two notable achievements in this area include her leadership of the 2014.
Yeah.
Campaign taking the temperature of language which involves students across all grade levels in Norway and language research and an exhibit at the Oslo City Museum on Language in the city for which she received that knowledge. Oslo Award in 2017.
Vendors commitment also extends to early career scholars and I have myself benefited from a PhD course on linguistic ethnography that she organized in 2017 at Multi Link, which is one of the very first of its kind in Norway.
Today we'll have the pleasure of hearing from benthe about intersections and differences between linguistic ethnography and citizens sociolinguistics.
Enter.
So please join me in welcoming Benthe Eileen Stanson
Thank you very much.
A good afternoon everybody and thank you so much in Gray for your generous introduction.
I was really warming and I really appreciated it.
Thank you very much.
I cannot see you all, but I hope you're doing fine.
There's a fly here.
I hope you're doing fine.
Despite this late hour, and also despite the seriousness of our time.
I have the honor to be one of the plenary speakers at this amazing digital conference.
And thank you so much to the organizing committee and for inviting me in particularly yoga devilder and Holly Decoy and I would like to congratulate you on a successful and intriguing conference.
The amazing how you've done this all digitally.
Today I will talk you through my work on citizen social linguistics and I will first try to share my screen and see whether that is OK.
Have I managed to share my screen?
Oh yes, that's good.
Thank you so much.
Uh, and uh?
As you see, I'm at home on top of it all.
It's a bus strike here in Norway as you probably have heard of already, so I do not have any opportunities to come to my office.
So anyhow, I hope you're settled with a Cup of coffee or whatever you prefer on a Friday afternoon, and I hope that I will compensate for taking your time.
You're late.
Anyhow, I have organized my talking to four parts and I will first define what I mean by citizen social linguistics.
I will then move onto definitions of citizen science.
I will include talk about its tradition.
It's stated today as a growing field.
And I will point out how citizen science can advance from linguistic ethnography as well as argue that linguistic ethnography.
Come learn a.
Bit please, uh, from citizen science initiatives.
There I will then go.
On to present data from the Norwegian service.
Linguistic study.
CS study that angry already mentioned taking the temperature on language and end this talk by addressing health citizen social linguistics.
Contribute.
Just sold some of the grand societal challenges of today.
I will then include a discussion of challenges and advantages of citizen science, but ethically, practically as well as matters of data validity and reliability.
But before I start, I would like to thank all the pupils and the teachers.
Who volunteered to participate in the Citizen Sociolinguistics Project Top temp and taking the temperature on language as well as showing my gratitude to my other collaborators who are listed here and I could not have done this project at all without them.
So what is citizen social linguistics?
Lick linguistics.
It's all about engaging citizens in doing social linguistic research.
The term citizen social linguistics was first introduced by Betsy Rhymes and Andrea Leone, who I slightly listened to earlier.
Yes.
Thank you.
Who defines citizen scientists as people who use their senses and intelligence to understand the world around them.
Stages in social linguistics.
Then is the study of these understandings.
I take a slightly different angle to citizen social linguistics to separate it more clearly from the traditional a field of folk linguistics where citizens metalinguistic metalinguistic talk remain an object of research from the outside.
It doesn't.
Social linguistics requires, as I see it, and in in line with citizen science initiatives within natural science.
The inclusion of non professionals in doing social linguistic research in collecting data in registering them and analyzing and interpreting.
Then that is of course relative to the level of citizen involvement and collaboration in the in.
In the study, as well as the research question.
Status and social linguistics.
As a term in both of these similar but slightly different, two approaches is both calqued on citizen high ends.
In the literature there are many definitions of status in science, but they all involve in one way or another the engagement of non professional in scientific research.
But the primary impacts of citizen science are seen in biological studies of global climate change, particularly biological changes in natural habitats.
Yeah.
Yes, has inner CSS.
The aggravation has a new term.
It's not code switching any longer.
It's citizen science.
Well, as my postdoc Samantha Goodchild reminded me of.
UMD CS has at least 150 years old tradition within natural Sciences, perhaps dating back as long as tooling.
This engagements of lay people in his work on the typology of animals and plants in the mid 18th century, but also to old citizen science initiatives such as the British Christmas Bird Count.
The Monarch watch initiative.
However, we also find citizen involvement in lexicographic work on dictionaries such as the Norwegian Dictionary.
And the Oxford English Dictionary.
The literature on CS has been scattered, and much of it exists according to Levenstein, under other labels such as Peer to Peer Science, Participatory Science, Community Science, Community based Science or research, public participation in Resource.
Road search or crowdsourced science.
In recent years, CS has been transformed and has gained momentum in a wide range of disciplines and a dedicated Journal, citizen science theory and practice was launched in 2014.
According to Kullenberg and Kasparov skis.
Scientometric meta analysis the number of citizen science studies has increased steadily over the last decade, particularly in the fields are on ethology, astronomy methodology and microbiota microbiome biology which like language are accessibles.
To citizens in their daily lives.
Hence, CS is a broad and expanding field, and one main attraction lies in its wide reaching potential.
Its potential to involve many citizen researchers and thus the methodology is suitable for gathering large amount of data, however.
I argue that a citizen science methodology is useful also to gather rich datasets that might otherwise be difficult.
Called to obtain as part of qualitative thick descriptions, to quote quote guards in 73.
Citizen Science is more than a method.
Its epistemological rationale is based on an out alteration of the relation between the researcher and the researched.
And that's the traditional way we conceive science.
And who has the authority to do it?
CES is all.
About also about creating public engagement and it has the potential to stimulate public education as well as facilitating Democratic participation and increased public understanding of science.
Within the growing field of citizen science, a few studies have been conducted on the scientists views on citizen science.
Such as Columbic 2017 and Regent Potter and these studies reveal that scientists are also skeptical towards public engagement in research. They question the ability of lay citizen to supply products of adequate scientific quality.
Along with the increase in CS studies, we have recently seen an increase in citizen science associations in establishment of networks, citizen science labs, as in lighting and and also.
Toolkits for citizen science initiatives.
As you see, some examples of hip.
Recently there are studies that explicitly positioned themselves with them, sitters in social linguistics as you see some examples of here.
For instance, Agostini and her work and her colleagues work on fat talk, that is, instances of talks such as oh.
I'm so fat.
I hate my thighs.
You're beautiful.
Come as well as the more ethnographic.
Uh, approach to work.
By Callum bag and and his colleague on analog bulletin boards in Sweden.
But before I continue with the Norwegian CS study, I will make the point that citizen social linguistic is not new, but it's particularly in studies employing exactly ah, ethnographic approaches.
CS studies can indeed advance from linguistic ethnography, where we see there is a long tradition.
A participatory research and of engaging members from the community of practice in collaborative work as well as to proactively share insights with community members and to give back to the community with a goal.
Of empowering the community in some way.
Wolfrom, for instance.
He discusses several advantages and limitations on collaborative work such, such as Proximity to the Research object and Differences in professional knowledge and the ways such differences can be optimized.
Interactive methods that takes into account the subjects own agenda for research and provide feedback to the subjects are also developed by Cameron and her colleagues in 1992.
Socias studies may, in other words, it evolves from linguistic ethnography methodology methodologically as well as empirically and theoretically such as knowledge of the social or societal meaning and value of language and the interrelation between language and power.
And how that may affect social interactions, including asymmetric power relations between the scientists and the citizens.
And this is of great importance in CS project, particularly when human subjects are involved, not just plants or whatever.
In sum, it is legitimate to ask whether citizen social linguistics is merely old wine in new bottles.
However, I do believe that linguistic ethnography can learn from citizen science initiatives by expanding the scope and include data from more participants.
Moreover, due to the recent emphasis on citizen science scientifically and research politically as I will return to in the end of my talk, it is important to take part in the development, serialization and discussion our citizen science.
Once it is insertion linguistics.
To be on the ball, so to speak.
Particularly since CS is highlighted as a way of answering recent calls and demands for democratization of research.
I will return to that after I have presented the Norwegian study, taking the temperature on language.
Add it here as you see in the act.
In 2014, we invited students in all grades in Norway to be language researchers through the research Councils nor Council. Norway's National Research campaign.
The campaign is held annually and is organized by the Research Council and the Center for Science Education at the University of Bergen in collaboration with the Research Unit.
And in 2014 I was sent in modeling one of the bid for the campaign and it was led by Ernie and enclosed collaboration with L Stereo and Crisp involved like Thunder.
Norway is a multilingual country, as you see in this box here, and I will let you dwell on it.
For a second.
In contrast to many other countries, there is no large scale census data on language competence and use in Norway, and apart from some qualitative studies, we do not know and we do not have knowledge about de facto.
Language, vitality.
And the CS project was the first national study on language use in the school and in the hosts.
In the project we apply the following criteria for Citizen Science, which according to Glenn Beck and her and colleagues are common in serious studies, namely the inclusion of citizens in the scientific process.
And that it has some kind of contribution to both science and the public, and that there is the reciprocal quality.
That is a two way communication between scientists and the public.
The research topics were based on interaction in one school class in the 5th grade, where the pupils expressed their interest in slang words and words that adults do not know.
And based on that and taking it further with our research questions too, we developed into you guys to be found.
Well, well, you can find them on my web page.
And thus the research questions involved in a joint effort, including the pupils with wishes on the one hand, and the researchers scientific needs on the other.
The pupils then, when we then invited everybody, they print it out, but one of the interview guides and went out looking for other pupils to interview after school.
As you see examples so here.
And in there I love that picture.
They went down there with the little guy in the little chair.
In the course of the campaign, students from all over the country collected popular words and phrases.
They explore their own and other languages and dialect, competence and language use in various contexts, and they registered the data in a digital database.
That here is an example of a picture of the database, and there's the web this link where you can find the the web the database because it's open and it will be open fears to cut to be used for analysis in the classroom.
And for research.
So the third criterion, Reciprocality, remember understood as a two way communication between the pupils, teachers and as research youth was secured through the center of Science Education and the web page, as well as directly with us primarily.
Please stay involved like something here.
As you see on this slide, the participants were in all age groups, but particularly between the 4th and the 10th grade.
We had participants from all over the country with most participants in the East in and around Oslo and in the West part of Norway in and around Bergen.
Let me first turn to the scientific impact of the system.
Thank you.
Because this study.
It was also the first national large scale attempt to tap into languages in Norway's multilingual homes.
And this figures show that English is reported by 70 percentage of the pupils daily uses English everyday, where 78% of them say that they use English when they speak with friends, followed by chats.
Text messages and computers.
And 66 percentage think that it is very good or good that we use English words in Norwegian.
And here we see some examples of some.
Pupils.
And it was the most popular words.
12 most popular words, most cited words that adults do not know.
Oh where lol laughing out loud Yolo, you only live once I pronounce it's horrible.
I'm winter.
It should be Yolo, but I say Yolo and swag.
That's the three most popular one.
And English is also used in the families.
532 as pupils reported about a daily use of two or more languages in the family, and almost everyone included English. Now sorry in Norwegian, and that is the reporting to remember. Almost everyone included Norwegian.
Kitchen.
And in this figure we have excluded Norwegian because it would have dwarfed all the other languages.
But what we do see is that the pupils report on a great linguistic diversity when asking about interaction with teachers at school.
We see that the linguistic diversity is considerably reduced.
That is, in student teacher interaction.
In other words, in the research campaign, we see that there is some mismatch between the linguistic diversity among the students and among the Andy homogeneous language use in the classroom.
I mean, in student teacher interacts I can only.
Say something bad and this result made us initiating new national study in collaboration with and on the initiative of the Language Counselor Norway called Rooms for languages.
In total in these two studies, approximately 9500 pupils and 450 teachers participated.
And overall there's thoughts from these two national studies shows that languages apart from Norwegian, English and the traditional foreign languages are more or less invisible in the Norwegian School.
This is in alignment with other national and International Studies on the subject, such as pointed out by Christina Low in yesterday's talk.
This is also in.
Alignment with the Norwegian educational education policy.
Representing a weak bilingual transition program.
According to Baker, where mother tongue instruction and and all actually bilingual subject training is given only the 4th first years, but only if the pupils are judged to lack proficiency in Norwegian.
To be able to follow regular.
Instruction in Norwegian and in practice there are hardly any bilingual or mother tongue instruction left in Norway, however.
Ah, the curriculum, the new one that's coming.
And they.
Started this autumn.
Fog for Nielsen, sugar, sugar, as well as the old one, the one that it's built on in scraps left are 2006. Emphasizes that multilingualism is a resource, and that all pupils.
Should experience that.
Based on little results from our International Studies and on the qualitative research that has been conducted on the visibility and use of the pupil languages at school, we conclude that there is a rich potential to enhance the use of the pupils multiple.
Linguistic resources in the Norwegian school.
And the.
Yes.
Moreover, a need for developing a multilingual pedagogue.
Pedagogy, pedagogy pedagogic I can't pronounce pedagogy in English.
Is it OK pedagogy?
But I will leave that because that is a topic for another talk.
So what?
We could have stopped here as we normally do when we do research.
We have, uh, some results and we stop.
However, our definition as citizen social linguistics takes us further.
Rico as theater studies includes some kinds of public impact, preferably to the citizen, but also a more general public impact, which I will now turn to.
So firstly we provided the database and the subsequent use of the database was relatively high.
And we developed teacher guidelines and suggestions for various tasks to be conducted in the classroom.
And these are available at the web page.
And Moreover I tried to tap into whether the participation in the project had some kind of effect on the pupils metalinguistic awareness.
Of course, that was hardly doable since we did not include that in the study itself.
I therefore analyzed news articles in printed media on the campaign.
And the analysis is elaborated a bit more in my 2018 paper on Citizen social linguistics.
And here you see an example from one media article.
Uh, they are taking the temperature of language.
The 7th grade is at primary school.
I'm not are not only doing regular schoolwork these days, they are also language researchers.
What is your favorite word?
The 7th grader is striking up a conversation with the 4th.
She has the answer ready high because it it's a nice way to greet them.
More aware of their language or their own languages.
The pupils claim that they use another language when they are with friends, more so than when they are with their parents or or write messages to them.
I don't, for instance right hello Bola to Mummy says she asked that she has become much more aware of the way she used to talk after she took part in the language project.
I've become much more aware of my own language now that is something which I haven't thought very much of in the past.
Furthermore, we develop different activities based on the CS study, such as the quests and different games, and we put up stands in the four largest cities in Norway as part of the Research Council of Norway's annual research markets.
And we did this in 2014 as well as in 2018. There is the LCG young on the left, and if you see well he's actually thought thi Jim Cummings down there. He dropped by and I captured him and try and forced him to take a quiz.
In Norwegian, which he did very well.
But anyhow, we.
Develop further, as in Gray pointed at a language exhibit exhibition Oslo sized language in the city at the Auto City Museum. It lasted for two years with more than 150,000 visitors.
And and in the exhibition we included the results from the CS studies as well as the activities from the research markets and we produced, for instance.
Here is the Oslo City Museum, by the way, it's a lovely place we produced, for instance.
Yet here you see.
It's a language.
The popular words.
And we produced a dialect battle as well as films on multilingualism in the family and films where celebrities talked about the language biographies.
And instances in life when they have felt that language mated and you see some of the examples of the from the exhibition.
This is England IMS who I work closely with in developing the language exhibition.
And finally we developed a language lounge where we arranged city walks, debates, lectures, quizzes, conversations with authors.
For example on language plays and identity in their novels.
A film about the exhibition is found on and the language lounge is, by the way, found on YouTube and it's the link down there made by uninvited sub.
And so let me now turn to the final discussion and address how citizens social linguistics can contribute to solve some of the grand societal challenges of today.
I will also include a discussion on challenges and advantages.
Who says?
Both ethically, practically as well as as matters of data validity and reliability.
There is a growing demand for public participation and engagement in research and of democratization of science and research.
We see, for instance, that CS is one of four strategic lines of actions.
In the European Commission or EU.
And then citizen science was recently recognized as an open science priority by the European Council.
Citizen Science is also emphasized in the new Framework Programme 9 called Horizon Europe, succeeding Horizon 2020 and in the US.
The Obama administration issued a memorandum in 2015 addressing societal and scientific challenges through citizen science and crowdsourcing and the US National Science Foundation Foundation support many citizen science initiatives.
Moreover, the US government runs through General Services Administration, the federal community of practice on crowdsourcing and citizen science.
And on their web page it is written the Fed CCS seeks to expand and improve the US government use of crowdsourcing, citizen science and similar public participation techniques for the purpose of enhancing agents in agency mission.
Scientific and societal outcomes.
However, and uh, which it's important to take into consideration.
In these documents and alike citizen science as such is not elaborated upon nor discussed.
It is important to reflect upon the fact that not all participatory research or see as projects encourage democratisation's or empowerment.
According to the science philosopher did, Kasparov did Kasparov scare at the University of Gothenburg.
There is the risk to overestimate the effects of citizen science unless you specify what kind of serious project you are actually.
Carrying out
**** Cass, Borowski and his colleagues have developed a typology based on the various citizen science studies and they divide the field into three types.
Their typology is based on who initiate the Citizen Science Project.
The level of public participation and the outcome of the project.
The most common type of citizen science project is CS as a scientific method.
And the goal here within that type is scientific knowledge, production and researchers or educational institutions are the ones that initiate them.
However, to contribute to the ground societal challenges of today, it is necessary that citizen science studies increase the level of public participation.
Touch us in the two other types of serious studies, civic mobilization, and public engagement.
And let us now turn.
To the grand societal challenges of today and ask whether and how citizen social linguistics can contribute.
Let me remind you our, which grants societal challenges that are listed in Horizon 2020.
We know that humanities was rather underrepresented in Horizon 2020, but we are particularly relevant to number 6.
And that is Europe in a changing world.
And we will find in the new framework her rise in Europe.
It consists of three.
The latest and it is the second one which is more or less the same as this that that we can may have our impact.
Impressing time.
We see how Graham societal challenges accelerate as the consequence of the coronavirus, such as increased lack of access to education.
Due to poverty and the technical or digital gap as pointed out for instance by loaded, this Ortega in Multiling's, Einar Haugen talk on Wednesday.
I think that citizen social linguistics is relevant.
For instance, on issues concerning migration and integration.
Social and linguistic differentiation, mechanism of exclusion and inclusion.
On language and identity.
Includes.
You know?
Almighty so well, baby well being and lived experiences and obviously in mapping multilingualism and increased European linguistic diversity.
And in that respect.
And now we're turning perhaps more into crowd sourced sourcing.
There has been developed.
Different apps such as Link Scape and Linguist Now.
I am and I would argue that citizen science provide us with an opportunity to access data that is otherwise hard to access.
For instance, uh, multilingualism in the family where you have a family.
Member U.S.
citizen scientist.
One of your panels touched upon this earlier.
How to.
To you you are there but you are not there.
The relationship between the researcher and the researched.
Uh, that is a interesting to discuss further.
Uh, this brings us to the fact that many of us have had trouble in accessing ethnographic data under the pandemic.
First I thought that it would be impossible now to recruit and work closely with citizen scientists, but maybe citizen science, particularly in the qualitative perspective or approach, is exactly one of the methods that are.
Feasible now.
I am coming up close to the end of my talk.
And I will.
Emphasize that citizen science and citizens social linguistics has the potential to create and develop the dialogue between academia and laypeople.
It can create spaces.
That will foster public engagement, stimulate critical language awareness, which again, can foster linguistic stewardship.
I like that word linguistics stewardship, take agency and ah.
As such, citizen social linguistics can potentially contribute to public education as well as to Democratic participation and increase public trust in understanding of science.
And perhaps this is an effect particularly.
A qualitative CS studies.
And I do think that there is a need to take citizen science further in a qualitative manner.
And as I have pointed out, it can advance from linguistic ethnography.
It is important to remember.
That there are important factors that can hinder processes of democratisation and empowering concerning the use of citizen science.
I mentioned the technological did.
Right?
The gap between those who have access to access to and competence in digital digital equipment and those who has not may reduce or will reduce participation.
Moreover, maybe it's only those who are already interested that will be recruited to citizen science studies.
What then about representation regarding gender, age, ethnicity, and other social categories?
And what happens when perhaps the actual contribution by the citizens are not visible in the outcome of the project?
For instance in publications?
Should all the citizens be mentioned in the publications?
In Gothenburg the work of Kohlenberg Kaspersky I know that they do.
Otherwise, the citizens can end up losing trust in science and the scientists.
And there are definitely need to think about more factors that can influence whether CSS contributed to democratization, empowerment or not.
There are, Moreover, certain ethical, practical and scientific challenges with citizens and science, particularly when humans are involved.
Citizens social linguistics involves third party consent.
When you hand over the responsibility of the research to the citizens.
And when including children, as in our case, we needed also parental consent.
In our case it was handled by the teacher, so that is perhaps easier than in other ear arenas or spaces places.
Uhm, and it is.
Definitely time consuming.
Ah, regarding developing material recruitment, how to recruit citizen scientists through guiding how if you do a quantitative and or qualitative.
Qualitative approach, of course.
And what about quality control?
The quality of the data?
When the data is collected by non professional.
Of course there is a need for a thorough collaboration.
This reciprocality an and training of the citizen scientists and a two way communication all the time or throughout the project.
And there might be some restrictions on which topics that are actually possible to gather through citizen science or citizen social linguistics in our case.
It is easy, perhaps with words.
But late people they do.
They have a metalinguistic knowledge about the syntax about phenology.
We know that they perhaps don't come.
But anyhow.
Maybe?
That the participation itself.
Is the most important?
Of conducting our CS UM project, the participation of the citizens of.
The lay people.
Let me end this talk with three take home messages.
The first take home message is that there is a need to develop methods and establish scientific acceptance.
Because we are sceptical.
For the relevance of public engagement in research to meet the needs of society and societal challenges of today, including inclusive schools and citizen science, citizen social linguistics is one way.
Secondly,
There is the need for more quantitative and particularly qualitative theaters and social linguistic studies.
As well as effect studies.
Can be large quantitative effect studies of course, but if you do citizen social linguistics qualitatively, remember not do the same mistake decided not to include something about how.
How did this affect you to have this a real?
Coming back to the citizen, make some interviews or whatever.
What was the impact of participating?
That would be so interesting data.
Uhm?
Uh, but anyhow, yes, uh, the effect of impact.
Uh, else is for the citizens.
As for financing and in light of the role of the universities in the society.
But remember citizen science, no matter what the financial institutions says, such as the USA National Foundation, European Horizon 2020 Horizon Europe.
Citizen science does not automatically lead to increased democratisation.
Agency and empowerment.
And I hope that the question and answer round will allow us to interact a bit on this issue.
So thank you very much.