Citizen Sociolinguistics as participatory practice – explorations and reflections 23.10.2025
The final seminar of the project LANGAWARE (Arkisuomien kielitietoisuudet ja muutos Societal awareness of linguistic variation and change funded by Kone Foundation 2023-2025) concentrated on sharing experiences, results as well as challenges of participatory practice within the framework of Sociolinguistics. The seminar was organized in a hybrid format, and we had a pleasure of hosting around 50 participants from number of institutions – approximately half joining us at Tampere University main building Cafe Aula Toivo.
The first part of the day was devoted to presenting and discussing key observations of our project. On the second half, after a dedicated discussion session, we enjoyed talks delivered by our advisors, fellow European Sociolinguists, who shared about their projects based on participatory practices. Via Zoom we had researchers from around the Europe as well as the U.S., joining, professor emeritus Dennis R. Preston, the pioneer of folk linguistics, among them.
The seminar presentations (link to the slides):
Johanna Vaattovaara: Opening (program, introduction of LANGAWARE)
Kaarina Hippi & Johanna Vaattovaara: Exploratory co-research on ‘language regard’ – academic and lay approaches in dialogue
Helmi Marttila: Working for understanding subtitling as a task of paraprofessionals
Olli Kuparinen: Self-report method as means of monitoring linguistic change – findings and further ideas
Barbara Soukup, University of Vienna: Citizen Science with Viennese high schoolers in the project ’VisibLL’ – Outcomes, impacts, learnings
Christoph Purschke, University of Luxembourg: Participation, motivation and social gaze control in the Lingscape project
Unn Røyneland, University of Oslo: Language activism and the role of scholars
Thank you all for joining and active participation!
