Language is more than communication; it is a form of power. Whereas science has been scrutinized for privileging Western values and norms, what has been less explored is scientific linguistic performance (e.g. writing). The enforcement of English as the “normative standard” has prioritized hegemonic values and assumptions, thereby shaping the expectations of scientific performance. HCI/CSCW is dominated by heteropatriarchal Western practices, overlooking entangled values and assumptions impacting non-Western colleagues. Our work presents a design fiction (fictitious case study) envisioning a research contribution which embodies non-Western linguistic nuances as an alternative “normative standard” for scientific communication. Through this work, not only are we championing care in developing responsible linguistic practices in HCI/CSCW, but also epistemically challenging readers with intentional confusion. We establish a call to action for acknowledging and embracing different writing practices that are more inclusive of the diverse representation of scholars in HCI/CSCW.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714073
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2025.acm.org/)