Decolonising Speech and Language Technology

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    Abstract

    After generations of exploitation, Indigenous people often respond negatively to the idea that their languages are data ready for the taking. By treating Indigenous knowledge as a commodity, speech and language technologists risk disenfranchising local knowledge authorities, reenacting the causes of language endangerment. Scholars in related fields have responded to calls for decolonisation, and we in the speech and language technology community need to follow suit, and explore what this means for our practices that involve Indigenous languages and the communities who own them. This paper reviews colonising discourses in speech and language technology, and suggests new ways of working with Indigenous communities, and seeks to open a discussion of a postcolonial approach to computational methods for supporting language vitality.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationCOLING 2020 - 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference
    EditorsDonia Scott, Nuria Bel, Chengqing Zong
    Place of PublicationCzech Republic
    PublisherAssociation for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
    Pages3504-3519
    Number of pages16
    Edition1
    ISBN (Electronic)9781952148279
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020
    Event28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING 2020 - Virtual, Online, Spain
    Duration: 8 Dec 202013 Dec 2020

    Publication series

    NameCOLING 2020 - 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference

    Conference

    Conference28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING 2020
    Country/TerritorySpain
    CityVirtual, Online
    Period8/12/2013/12/20

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