Volume 2025, Issue 291 - Special Issue: Negotiating Sociolinguistic Justice: Turning Spaces of Inequality into Spaces of Conscientization; Issue Editors: Luisa Martín Rojo, Joan Pujolar and Estibaliz Amorrortu

This introduction to the special issue Negotiating Sociolinguistic Justice: Turning Spaces of Inequality into Spaces of Conscientization focuses on how sociolinguistic research can be reimagined as a tool for activism and social intervention. The authors advocate for research that not only describes language-based inequalities but actively intervenes to address them by engaging communities in participatory processes. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s concept of conscientization, this special issue explores ho w spaces can be created for researchers and participants to engage in critical reflection on linguistic injustices, investigate their socio-political roots, and mobilize for collective change. Grounded in the action-research project EquiLing , conducted across various sociolinguistic contexts in Spain – including Madrid, Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country – this special issue examines the role of language in the (re)production of social inequalities, manifesting differently across regions. These inequalities include the exclusion of immigrant languages, non-standardized language varieties, and minoritized languages such as Basque, Galician, and Catalan, as well as the misrecognition of their speakers, resulting in their limited participation in social institutions. In four articles, the authors illustrate how conscientization spaces integrate participants’ voice and agency – from university students to youth in sports clubs – to critically reflect on the roots of language-based inequality and mobilize toward counteraction. Each article explores a different stage of the conscientization process, from raising awareness of inequalities to exploring structural causes to mobilizing for action. The issue also examines how research committed to sociopolitical transformation extends beyond academic boundaries, requiring partnerships with social collectives and activists at all stages of the research. This involvement poses significant challenges to epistemological, methodological and policy frameworks, which in turn raise ethical concerns. Addressing these challenges requires rethinking who has the right to produce knowledge and developing approaches that foster collaborative engagement with co-participants and stakeholders. This approach adds a political dimension to research, which in turn poses new challenges, particularly with regard to the impact of transformative action, and requires critical reflection on the social responsibilities of researchers and the power dynamics inherent in research practices. Ultimately, it requires navigating ethical complexities related to participants’ agency and authorship. This special issue highlights the potential of participatory action research to promote sociolinguistic justice and aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on how to effectively address these challenges. Together, these contributions provide a roadmap for future research that seeks not only to understand linguistic inequalities but also to transform them through collective action.

This paper explores how researchers and co-participants in a joint Participatory Action Research (PAR) project in Galicia and Madrid discursively negotiate the conditions of possibility to co-construct spaces in which to talk about forms of sociolinguistic injustice. The aim of our multisite project is to create spaces for sociolinguistic research and intervention in which to identify the “sociodiscursive” elements used to manage the conditions of possibility that make it possible to address linguistic injustice. In our project we work with two related but not identical theoretical frameworks, Critical Language Awareness (CLA) and Freire’s pedagogical model of conscientization (or sensitization through discussion, reflection and action). Our findings reveal the presence of two types of conditions of possibility: “epistemic conditions of possibility”, derived from the participatory methodological framework itself, and “dialogic conditions of possibility”, that emerge in the participation framework of situated communicative activities. The data show how, in empathetic situations in which affect is verbalized, co-participants can reach what we call “eureka moments” when the naturalization of inequality is problematized. The newly-gained awareness of participants who reach these moments of revelation is evidenced in explicit manifestations in which people verbalize how they suddenly understand the why of past situations or realize that something may be beginning to change. In this paper we present the activities used in controlled environments to promote this shift, since awareness raising is something that cannot be carried out by the speakers themselves, at least not alone, and we discuss their effectiveness.

The EquiLing project aims at contributing to sociolinguistic justice by understanding language-mediated social inequalities and facilitating the conditions through which to challenge and transform these situations. In order to do so and following a Freirean approach and a Participatory Action Research methodology, we created conscientization spaces in two university sites in Bilbao and Madrid. In these conscientization spaces, researchers and students (or co-participants, as we term them here) engaged collaboratively in group dynamics to develop critical sociolinguistic awareness and foster transformative actions to challenge the sociolinguistic inequalities within each context. Students, when sharing these experiences, often evoked the external spaces they transit through in their daily lives, in which they faced situations that show lack of recognition, unequal distribution of resources and/or participation. Space appeared as a key element in the articulation of their narratives and experiences due to it usually being configured and constructed through hegemonic (in our case, sociolinguistic) ideologies and practices, which can leave speakers falling outside this normativity in situations of sociolinguistic injustice. In reaction to this, in our conscientization spaces, we (researchers and co-participants) have challenged these dynamics interactionally in joint reflection and practice by cultivating a safer space. In this sense, we have tried to foster counter-hegemonic practices in our spaces, facilitating in some cases a bridge to other spaces. This has shown that space is a central element in the configuration of a sociolinguistic order and that it is dynamic, socially constructed, and in continuous transformation, which also creates possibilities for resistance.

While the role of language in inequality is often acknowledged, much remains unknown about how language-mediated inequality occurs. This paper seeks to move the field forward by developing a comprehensive approach to language inequality. The multi-site EquiLing project applied participatory action research (PAR) from a Freirian perspective, focusing on the Madrid region and the Basque Country. In both settings, researchers and participants co-constructed spaces to express and analyze experiences of language inequality. Participants reported the repeated exercise of a power technique – language surveillance – which operated on specific language features of the speakers. Participants’ accounts of their experiences together with shared analyses brought to light, in the first place, the pervasive, ubiquitous, and all-encompassing nature of language surveillance – the continuous observation and assessment of language practices and repertoires that permeate people’s behaviours, bodies, and minds. The article focuses, therefore, on how surveillance, a technique of power, is exercised not only by institutions and their representatives, but also in a myriad of everyday encounters. Secondly, this article highlights the importance of often implicit “speakerhood models” in the exercise of surveillance and, consequently, in the construction of language-based inequality. The research participants’ analysis reveals how speakers who conform to these speakerhood models perceive their social position as superior and authorized to impose negative sanctions on speakers with diverse and multilingual repertoires who deviate from these models. At the same time, speakers subjected to surveillance often contribute it, by internalizing norms and spekearhood models, and performing self-evaluation, that subalternize them. Furthermore, the connection of these models to cultural and linguistic citizenship has a direct impact on community membership and access to resources. Thus, these models perpetuate inequality by constraining participants’ access to social domains, recognition, and active social participation. Finally, this article reflects on how we addressed the challenges of participatory and transformative research. We navigated institutional constraints and hierarchical dynamics by creating spaces of conscientization, fostering collaborative knowledge building, and encouraging participants to critically reflect on their experiences through narrative accounts. In addition, we employed a process of accompaniment to support participants as agents of change in addressing linguistic injustices. These procedures laid the groundwork for the transformative goals of the research.

Drawing on the perspective of critical sociolinguistics, this article presents preliminary reflections on the debate on agency in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. It draws upon three studies inspired by the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, conducted in various contexts in the Spanish state: (i) a university setting of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, characterized by a high linguistic diversity that remains largely invisible; (ii) a cultural organization in Catalonia, whose objective is to overcome social and linguistic forms of segregation by fostering contact between recent migrants and the local population; (iii) sport clubs in the Basque Country, where young people are encouraged to use Euskara (the Basque language) and resist the tendency to resort to the more dominant Spanish language. We discuss diverse approaches to the notion of agency, while also offering an innovative perspective grounded in field experience: agency emerges as a “doing-together”, as a dialogic-collaborative process resulting from the interaction of researchers and participants. The outcomes of our interactions in the field extend beyond the confines of research studies, revealing the inherent political dimension of the project. This realization compels us, as researchers, to engage in ongoing reflection both within and beyond the context of fieldwork.

Since the approval of the Estatuto de Autonomía de Galicia (EAG) in 1981, Galician has undergone continuous language planning (LP) efforts. While several authors have examined various aspects of this planning process, studies evaluating the overall relevance and effectiveness of measures remain limited. To contribute to this evaluation, this study examines the use of translation as a means of LP for Galician. After providing an overview of translation as a fundamental tool in minority LP, the paper focuses on the Galician publishing industry, which has been consistently subsidized by the Galician government to promote language development. Specifically, the paper looks for correlations between subsidies for translation into Galician (inputs), translations published in Galician (outputs) and citizens using the minoritized language and consuming books and cultural products (outcomes), based mainly on data from regional government sources and the publishing industry. In analysing the use of translation subsidies as a LP strategy, this paper seeks to shed light on their relevance and effectiveness in contributing to the development of the Galician language. Also, the evaluation of translation-based measures in the publishing industry provides valuable insights into the success of these initiatives and their impact on language vitality.

Based on a critical analysis of the museum’s linguistic landscape and a discourse analysis of the museum texts, this paper explores how the Indigenous Ainu language is both used and displayed in the National Ainu Museum and discusses how these observations relate to the museum’s overt language policy and potential role as a site for Ainu language revitalisation. Though Ainu has been announced as the official first language of the museum, this study suggests that there is incongruity between overt policy and practice. While Ainu is clearly the symbolic first language, in practice Japanese and English are the museum’s two main languages, echoing the different functions and values associated with these languages. Although the museum is participating in concrete language maintenance initiatives, the exhibition texts discuss language revitalisation as a purely linguistic campaign, detaching it from broader contemporary society and Indigenous rights issues. These findings show how language use and display in museums are connected to the surrounding ideologies and policies, but do not necessarily need to be confined by them.