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SLA Committee on Language and Social Justice

The charge of the SLA Committee on Language and Social Justice is to increase awareness, both within the AAA and among the general public, of the ways in which language is implicated in social discrimination; and, where appropriate, to respond to specific instances of language-related discrimination and injustice. To these ends, the committee seeks to collect and disseminate knowledge concerning language and social justice; to identify problems and issues in which linguistic anthropologists can and should intervene, and to which linguistic anthropological knowledge can and should be applied; to organize, lead, and facilitate such interventions and applications; and to advise the AAA Committee on Human Rights, the AAA Executive Board, and other AAA bodies on how the AAA as a whole should respond to issues concerning language and social justice.

Current Active Members of the Language and Social Justice Steering Committee

Core members:

  • Katherine Morales Lugo (Chair) 
  • Mariel Acosta Matos (Listserv Manager)
  • Yliana V. Rodriguez (Initiatives leader)

Research initiatives:

  • KD Thompson (Working Group of Destandardization, Raciolinguistics, and Academic Language)

Call for New Members (2026 – 2027)

Join the Language and Social Justice Committee!

We are looking for three new members to join the Language and Social Justice (LSJ) Steering Committee. LSJ is a standing committee of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology since 2010 (whose past contributing members include: Ana Celia Zentella, Laura R. Graham, Alexandra Jaffe, and many others) dedicated to increasing awareness of and responding to language-related injustice.

Steering Committee members serve three-year terms and help organize and shape the work of the larger committee, while also providing continuity and institutional memory. Members also have the opportunity to transition to chair in the 3rd year of the position.

Membership offers an opportunity to build community with scholars and researchers committed to language and social justice, develop collaborative projects and publications, organize conference panels and events, create pedagogical and public-facing resources, and contribute to conversations around language-related inequities within and beyond linguistic anthropology. We especially hope LSJ can be a space where members bring their own interests and develop meaningful work together.

We welcome linguistic anthropologists and researchers whose work is informed by language and social justice. If you are interested in collaborating on LSJ research initiatives, developing public-facing writings or statements, creating pedagogical materials, or helping plan panels and activities for the AAA and SLA conferences, we would love to hear from you!

To apply, please email Katherine Morales Lugo at [email protected] with a brief statement of interest (no more than 300 words) by December 1, 2026.

LSJ Listserv Communications

To learn more about ongoing initiatives, events, meetings, and work being done by LSJ, or to be added to the LSJ listserv, please email your request to Mariel Acosta at [email protected] with the subject line: “Request to join LSJ listserv.”