Amy Fountain

Public Outreach in Linguistics: Engaging Broader Audiences

Linguistics is traditionallya universitysubject.Wedescribeherecomprehensive effortsthattheUniversity of Arizona’s Linguistics Department makes to engage with additional audiences: K–12 and community college students, lifelong learners, and festival-goers. Our coordination of these efforts is relatively recent, and this article emphasizes what we are learning in areas like adjustment to different audiences and efficient use ofresources. While many individual linguists and somedepartments are engaged inoutreach activities such as those described here, our work is unusual in its breadth, in terms of both external contacts and department-internal participants.