About

What is the Community Linguist? Principles and aims of the initiative

The Community Linguist is a broad initiative

The Community Linguist is a broad initiative to promote awareness of linguistic and sociocultural diversity in our communities. In so doing, we will share and question ideas about languages, communication, culture, and people. Since we believe that linguistic, educational, cultural, and sociopolitical issues - whether in the Philippines or elsewhere - are ultimately interrelated and have huge implications, it’s unavoidable that we’ll bring these matters to your attention.

Some of the activities that we (will) do include:

• publishing easily digestible videos and infographics (primarily about language-related matters);
• holding various educational discussions and knowledge building events (e.g., reading groups, brainstorming sessions);
• interviewing emerging and distinguished language researchers and allow them to share their work; and
• enabling communities to value their languages and their multilingual identities.

Our content will be in English, Tagalog, or both. Maybe someday, we can add other named languages.

What is Linguistics? Why “the Community Linguist?”

Most textbooks defines the social science of linguistics as the “scientific study of languages,” where linguists follow a systematic approach in analyzing different languages (e.g., how they sound and what their grammatical structures are); how these are used in societies to express, interpret, and negotiate ideas and feelings; how people learn, acquire, and develop the capacity to understand language and communicate; and how these languages are valued by different people.

But my favorite definition comes from Pennycook (2018)¹:

“(…) applied linguistic practices can be more usefully understood as temporary assemblages of thought and action that come togehter at particular moments when language-related concerns need to be addressed.” (p. 113)

This definition is very important, because it recognizes linguistics as a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field. As long as there is an language-related question or concern addressed, we can count that as linguistics!

What will this initiative produce?

Want to know more about us?

• Check out our projects!
• Check out our resources! (Coming soon)
• Check out our YouTube channel! (Coming soon)

Want to know more about linguistics? We gotchu fam!

Credits

Wilfred Gabriel Gapas, who heads this initiative

Noriel Beltran, the artist behind Gab’s bust artwork