The Language of Science and Social Licence to Operate

Social licence to operate (SLO) is an informal agreement that infers ongoing acceptance of an industrial or energy project by a local community and the stakeholders affected by it. Negotiation of SLOs centrally implicates language and communication, including scientific language and concepts. We first review the literature about the definition and communicative features of SLOs, and their relation to scientific communication. We describe communication accommodation theory and the ways that it can help understand (un)successful SLO negotiation, and describe examples of texts that show accommodative or nonaccommodative language around SLOs. We summarize some results which help indicate different ways of accommodating communities in the negotiation of SLOs. Finally, we describe a research agenda on communication accommodation and SLOs, in the service of improving their impact on energy, the environment, and the transfer of science.