Call for Papers

Abstracts are invited for papers on any aspect of American Indian languages

Special Session: Indigenous Languages Writing in Language Reclamation

We invite the submission of papers that explore the role of writing for language reclamation and language vitalization efforts. Some topics we are interested in exploring in this Special Session include:

  • Children and/or adult literacy pedagogy
  • Orthography development
  • Writing and language policy
  • Developing and teaching writing in multilingual contexts
  • Role of linguistics in orthography development
  • Non-linguistic factors involved in orthography development

Parasession: Documentation, Description & Theory

The parasession welcomes papers on language documentation, revitalization, and descriptive and/or theoretical work (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics), historical linguistics, anthropological linguistics, etc.) 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 in a way that informs on 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:

Abstracts should be up to 500 words or less (excluding examples and/or references).

Abstracts should include the following:

  • 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 / parassession / poster session)

Oral presentations will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Special Session and Parassession are limited to 30 minutes. The Poster Session will run for 60 minutes. It provides an opportunity for more open-ended, two-way communication with the audience. Undergraduate students are invited to submit an abstract for this session.

Please submit your abstract in PDF format by email to sail.uarizona@gmail.com (with the subject: “Abstract – SAIL 2022″)

Submission deadline: January 2, 2022.

Authors will be notified of acceptance by January 17, 2022.