Assemblages of language, impact and research

Abstract

Three scholars—of languages and knowledges, of translation and writing, and of higher education—discuss societal impact as a higher education policy goal and the language ideologies that link with that discussion. We first criticize the problematic notion of impact that is common in higher education policy and discuss language and impact in terms of their assumed predictable, definable, and linear nature. From there, we move on to advocating for a multimodal, multidirectional, locally, and globally relevant impact that is focused on direct engagement, participatory approaches, support for promoting community activities, and introducing more epistemologically just understandings of the relationship between the researcher and the community they work with. Eventually, this requires us academics to be accountable to our environment and to abandon the binaries between researcher–researched, subject–object, and human–non-human.