To explore directions in and issues of language and discourse practices literacy, learning processes, and social contexts through studies grounded in sociocultural, constructivist and constructionist perspectives.

Dear LSP family, 

I hope this finds you with time and space to rest and rejuvenate. 

On rejuvenation, I was energized and inspired by our community at this year’s conference. Thank you for your willingness to mentor, share your work, and come to the very last meeting of the conference. I hope many of you will again be willing to review, mentor, and present next year in Denver. 

As I think forward to this next academic year, I find myself necessarily reflecting on the last. I had the privilege of teaching a year-long discourse analysis course in 2023-2024. At the end of the course, students commented on how slow and meticulous discourse analytic work is. I can’t disagree. They’re right. Discourse analysis is a lot of work. And, I believe, worth the effort. 

From my perspective, the study of language and its role in the (re)creation of social processes (or perhaps social practices, as Dr. Moje suggested in her 2024 Gumperz address) allows us, as researchers, to bear witness to people’s fight for emancipation and personhood. Laura and I (2023) recently discussed the profundity of this affordance as it allows us to, hold still moments of unfolding interaction; to recreate that space, to examine the choices that were made, how, and with what social consequence. It allows us to lift up moments in which interlocutors choose mutuality and humanization, regardless of how briefly, and to argue that [they] mattered (p. 8).

This coming year promises many opportunities to witness how people use language to mislead and to maintain oppressive power structures. It also promises opportunities to lift up moments in which people engage in redress, reconciliation, and rebuilding (Luke, 2004). 

Our role as witnesses makes us answerable to those who share their lives with us (Hikida, 2023 in Waldron et al., 2023; Patel, 2015), and I believe that our focus on how people use language to accomplish social action positions our research strongly in relation to AERA’s 2025 conference theme: Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Educational Renewal. 

I look forward to seeing you at AERA 2025. May we be worthy witnesses (Winn & Ubiles, 2011). 

Best, 

Michiko Hikida 

LSP SIG Chair 

References: 

Luke, A. (2004), “Notes on the future of critical discourse studies”, Critical Discourse Studies, 1(1), pp. 149-157.

Patel, L. (2015). Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. Routledge. Taylor, L. A., & Hikida, M. (2023). Guest editorial: Introduction: Reconstructive discourse analysis as an approach to redressing racism in critical studies of literacy. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 22(1), 1–10. 

Waldron, C. H., Willis, A., Tatum, A., Salas, R. G., Coleman, J. J., Croom, M., Deroo, M. R., Hikida, M., Machado, E., Smith, P., & Zaidi, R. (2023). Reimagining LRA in the Spirit of a Transcendent Approach to Literacy. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 23813377231183735. 

Winn, M. T., & Ubiles, J. R. (2011). Worthy witnessing. Studying diversity in teacher education, 295308.