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Poster Short Abstract

The “language picnic” is a playful format where citizen participants reflect on language-related issues. It intends to bridge the gap between lay expertise and academic inquiry. In the poster, I describe the concept, the method and an occasion which resulted in a co-created research project.

Poster Abstract

One of the central challenges in citizen science is how to meaningfully engage citizens in research. Most approaches focus on inviting participation through contribution to pre-designed scientific projects. However, less attention has been paid to instances where citizens initiate their own involvement as producers of relevant knowledge. This paper introduces the “language picnic”, a sociolinguistic outreach method inspired by the format of philosophical cafés. Since 2022, these informal gatherings have brought together citizens to discuss language-related societal issues in a playful, moderated setting. Drawing on my experience organizing and facilitating these events, I interpret them as a form of citizen sociolinguistics, where participants reflect on their linguistic environments drawing on their own expertise. Rather than contributing to traditional data collection, they co-construct new knowledge through dialogue. The language picnic also served as a launchpad for a co-created citizen science project investigating the recognizability of authorship in Hungarian AI-generated versus human-written texts. The idea, implementation, and dissemination of the research were all shaped by citizen input. I argue that researchers should invest in activities that, while not strictly scientific in nature, foster meaningful bridges between civil society and academic inquiry. Such initiatives can empower citizens to become active agents in knowledge production and redefine the boundaries of participation in sociolinguistic research.