ABSTRACT
This chapter presents and discusses how citizen science (CS) i.e., the “participation of non-professional contributors in the production of scientific knowledge” (Kasperowski et al., 2021, p. 14,) is conceptualised and applied in (socio)linguistics. After outlining the recent impetus of CS across scientific fields, in research policy and planning and thereafter presenting the European Citizen Science Association's ten principles of CS, this chapter presents a state of the art of (youth) citizen (socio)linguistic studies and explores the epistemological, methodological and ethical considerations as well as the impact of engaging (young) people as language researchers. As an entrance, the chapter presents insights from a small-scale citizen sociolinguistic project in Oslo, namely Youths Speak Back, where young people were engaged as researchers in multiple stages of the research process. The chapter outlines some of the outcomes for the participants themselves and for the professional researchers, and it critically discusses ethical and methodological concerns including issues of recruitment, mutual trust and motivation, some of them more pertinent in citizen humanities and citizen social sciences. It is argued that there is a need to push forward collaborative approaches in CS and consequently in (socio)linguistics to support the UN's sustainability goal no 10, Reduced inequalities.
