Practical steps toward making trans language activism better

Abstract

I have very few quibbles or objections to the challenges laid out by Zimman above; instead of quibbling or objecting, therefore, I'm going to suggest ways that we (i.e., the people I presume to be reading this issue-linguists, or linguist-adjacent people) can take concrete steps to address these challenges in small ways. Individual efforts may have variable effects, but it is my hope that enough of us moving even an inch in the right direction will make a significant difference in the field.The first main challenge Zimman identifies is that TLA is mostly talked about online and at colleges and universities, where the discussion fails to reach many people. My thoughts on how to address this are entwined with my general approach to public scholarship, and I will first lay out some ideas of what linguists can do, then specifically say what I personally am going to do to mitigate this challenge. First, I think that linguists who are employed securely in academia (particularly tenure-track faculty) and perhaps industry (especially those in research-related jobs) should allocate a certain amount of our time and efforts toward not just doing public-facing science communication about linguistics (LingComm, cf. Gawne & McCulloch, 2023) but toward actively improving our skills in effective messaging. Being an effective public communicator is a skill that requires honing, and each medium is also a skill that requires honing. Multimedia projects like podcasts and short educational videos are possible outlets, but we should also be writing short pieces for popular (nonacademic) publications, writing letters to the editor and opinion essays in newspapers, and offering live talks.Some important practical advice I can share that surprises some academics is that LingComm does not have to be about your own research. You (yes, you, grad student reading this!) can pitch a short article to Mental Floss or Buzzfeed about research that you understand, that is peer-reviewed, and that you just find interesting and worth sharing. There is a lot of exceptional research published in recent years about trans language-what are trans people doing, how do we use language to strengthen ourselves, how do people use language to harm us, how is language changing around us?-all of which is very good fodder for a lot of LingComm. Letters to the editor, local radio and television programs, local newspapers, community programming at libraries, and other such spaces would be a good place to start. Outreach to primary and secondary schools can also be exceptionally powerful, as I learned from my participation in Fordham's Demystifying Language Project.Additionally, in order to make sure that we do not exacerbate the issues outlined in Zimman's 2nd and 3rd challenges (below), we need to carefully audit and edit existing LingComm materials, such as any blogposts, brochures, popular articles, or other media we have produced.