Human Centered Narratives & Collaboration Bilingual Symposium

Join the Latine Co-Lab this upcoming Friday, December 5th, as they invite journalists, linguists, and language coaches to share their best tips on how you can improve your communication skills! 

Learn about Plain Language, promoting human-centered narratives, and the benefits of Spanish and bilingualism in the professions from linguistic advocates and digital experts, and also learn to tell stories that connect with your communities using Plain Language.

About the Organizers

Angie Gonzalez and Ana Ortega Pérez

Angie Gonzalez is one of the co-organizer of the bilingual symposium. Gonzalez is a lawyer in the United States, and she has also worked many years as a financial lawyer in Colombia. When Gonzalez came to the United States to pursue her Masters in Law, she encountered Plain Language and Legal Design for the first time, two frameworks that promote linguistic and social justice by making information more accessible and culturally responsive to audiences, especially to audiences with limited proficiency in English.

Ana Ortega Pérez is the other co-organizer of the bilingual symposium. Pérez studied Journalism in Spain and has a Bachelor’s in Journalism, as well as a Masters in International Relations and a PhD in Communications. Here at UC Davis, Pérez is a graduate student PhD candidate studying Spanish Linguistics, and her PhD is about developing intercultural communication. Pérez is especially interested in heritage speakers and Critical Language Awareness (CLA).

As Pérez puts it, CLA aligns well with Plain Language and Legal Design because it, too, is a framework that promotes social justice by allowing students to realize that their languages are not innocent constructs when put into society, and rather are constructs that are imbued with power and ideology that can thus reinforce discrimination. CLA prompts students to take action; to be proud of who they are, to embrace their identities, languages, and cultures, to fight for their linguistic rights, and to promote a better life for themselves and their communities. 

Since both Pérez and Gonzalez work as instructors in the Spanish and Portuguese department and are PhD students in Linguistics, they have been able to align their research interests and co-found the Latine Co-lab. 

About the Latine Co-Lab

The Latine Co-Lab is an interdisciplinary group comprised of undergraduates, graduate students, university faculty and staff, community members, linguistic experts, journalists, advocates, and so on that all work to promote linguistic and social justice. Through Plain Language, CLA, and Legal Design, the Latine Co-Lab exposes participants to the socio-political aspects of language so that they realize they, too, have linguistic rights. The Latine Co-Lab also takes action beyond the classroom.

For example, students in the Latine Co-Lab have written and designed bilingual children's books, children’s books in Spanish, and children’s books in Spanglish based on topics that are important for Latino communities, which were then shared with non-profit organizations and spread to Latino families. Students have also designed merchandise to raise funds for nonprofit organizations that are struggling economically after federal cuts, and have translated university documents using the principles of Plain Language, CLA, and Legal Design to turn them into culturally responsive documents ready to be used by students and parents. As a whole, the Latine Co-Lab has been helping non-profit organizations who work with immigrants, among others, to translate critical documents.

The Latine Co-Lab meets every Wednesday from 3:00–5:00pm in Sproul Hall 114. If you are interested in what they do and their impact, be sure to check them out!