You are on page 1of 77

Contents

I. Language Endangerment Crisis


Krauss, Michael. 1992. The world's languages in crisis. Language 68(1):410 Defines three levels of language health/endangerment (moribund, endangered, safe) based on whether children are learning the language and will, during the coming century, continue to do so. Estimates that 90% of the worlds languages will become extinct in the 21st century and calls on linguists and linguistics as a discipline to document languages and store the documentation in safe repositories so as to enable possible revitalization, as well as to work actively with local communities and governments for supportive language planning. Laments the lack of interest in and support for study and documentation of endangered languages in academia. Colette Craig, Nora England, Laverne Masayesva Jeanne, Michael Krauss, Lucille Watahomigie, and Akira Yamamoto. 1992. Endangered Languages. Language 68.1-42. In 1991, the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America included a symposium entitled "Endangered Languages and Their Preservation" organized by Kenneth Hale and Michael Krauss. The talks given at that meeting were published in the journal Language (Hale et al. 1992), and they served a critical role in heightening linguists' awareness of the urgency of language endangerment, as well as raising issues on the responsibilities of linguists. These subsequent growing body of work on language documentation and revitalization reflects a shift in how linguistic fieldwork is taught and practiced, in the types of material considered to be research product, and in the re-evaluation of how 'broader impacts' is interpreted at grant agencies. Language documentation and revitalization have been argued to have scientific merit and humanistic value. Ladefoged, Peter. 1992. Another view of endangered languages. Language 68: 809-811. This short article is cast as an answer or rebuttal to the views expressed in Hale et al. Endangered Languages published in this same volume of Languagee earlier in the year. Ladefoged begins by noting, The views expressed in these papers are contrary to those held by many responsible linguists (809). In particular, he 1

takes exception to the idea that minority language communities invariably regard their languages as sacred. He notes several communities with whom he has worked who do not seem to regard their language as more than the intellectual and economic tool that it is in their daily lives. He notes that many such communities are only too happy to open their language up for foreign linguists to study and record. He also notes that several such groups voluntarily choose to forsake their language, especially so that their children may be raised with an LWC as their first tongue so as to guarantee greater opportunity. Ladefoged argues that linguists have no right to interfere with or argue against such calculations on the part of minority language speakers. He goes on to take exception to the notion that languages always ought to be preserved. It is paternalistic of linguists to assume that they know what is best for the community. One can be a responsible linguist and yet regard the loss of a particular language, or even a whole group of languages, as far from a catastrophic desctruction (Hale et al. 1992:7). Statements such as just as the extinction of any animal species diminishes our world, so does the extinction of any language (Hale et al. 1992:8) are appeals to our emotions, not to our reason. The case for studying endangered languages is very strong on linguistic grounds. It is often enormously strong on humanitarian grounds as well. But it would be self-serving of linguists to pretend that this is always the case. We must be wary of arguments based on political considerations. I am no more in favor of genocide or repression of minorities than I am of people dying of tuberculosis or starving through ignorance. We should always be sensitive to the concerns of the people whose language we are studying. But we should not assume that we know what is best for them (810). Ladefoged goes on to argue that language groups are not like animal species and that the world is adept at preserving diversity. Different cultures die as new ones arise. The new ones are not the same as what was lost, but they are nonetheless valuable and worthy. He maintains that linguists should comport themselves with professional detachment in situations where nations struggle to balance the need for unity and economic and educational feasibility with vernacular preservation, not arguing for any one course of action over another. Dorian, Nancy C. 1993. A response to Ladefogeds other view of endangered languages. Language 69: 575-579. Dorian takes aim at specific points made by Ladefoged in his own, general response to the Hal et al. suite of articles in Language 1992. She first argues that Ladefoged implies by his warning against arguments based on political considerations that apolitical positions can be found and adopted (575). Dorian holds that such is not possible where endangered languages are concerned. In actuality, linguistic salvage work which consists solely of record[ing] for posterity certain structural features of a threatened small language is inevitably a political act, just as any other act touching that language would be (575). Whether the linguist sides with a government trying to impose unity and fearing that vernacular languages will lead 2

to tribalism and fragmentation or with a minoritized community fighting the oppression of a stronger central government, he is engaged in a political issue. While Dorian does not advocate fomenting rebellion, she argues in general that nation-states often exercise power to the detriment of minority language groups. At any rate, a field linguist cannot avoid political entanglement. In response to Ladefogeds use of speakers of Toda in India and Dahalo in Africa willingly forsaking their native tongues in favor of LWCs that promise more opportunity for their children, Dorian holds up the example of grandchildren of Scotts Gaelic speakers in East Sutherland who berate their forebears for not transmitting the ancestral language, despite overwhelming social stigma attached to its use. Since such third generation pursuit of ancestral languages is common, Dorian argues that we must remain sensitive to a longer-term dynamic than simply a single groups choice to seek socio-economic betterment in the here and now. In response to Ladefogeds assertion that language loss may not be catastrophic, Dorian points out that it is undisputed that large numbers of languages are dying, that their structures and phonologies have lots to offer developing theories, that they are recoverable if documented properly and revitalized, but probably never in the exact same form as their prior, robust existence. Finally, Dorian takes issue with Ladefogeds emphasis on the possibility of objectivity and simply laying out the facts of linguistic situations. She notes that such facts are often not readily discernible and involve considerable political and social implications. She states that Ladefoged either sidesteps or completely ignores considerable ethical issues in his discussion and that, if there is one point on which linguists can and should agree, it is that linguists advocacy is worth bringing to bear on the large-scale language endangerment situation that exists in the world today. Comrie, Bernard and Martin Haspelmath. 2001. The library of Babel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Recites the common statistics of 6,500 languages in the world, of which between 90% and 50% will become extinct during the 21 st century. Invokes metaphor of Borges Library of Babel to cast languages in the mold of repositories of human knowledge like volumes on library shelves. Includes intriguing examples of linguistic diversity, like Jamul Tiipay of S. CA where kinship terms are verbs instead of nouns, and Kayardild of N. Australia where tense marking is found on nouns as well as verbs. Cites case of Malagasy as example of how knowledge of minor languages helps to reconstruct prehistory. Details efforts of the Max Planck Institute to create a World Atlas of Language Structures and create an online archive for language documentation at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Whalen, D. H. and Gary F. Simons. Forthcoming. Endangered language families. 1st International Conference on Language Documentation 3

and Conservation, University of Hawaii, 12-14 March 2009. Power Point Presentation. Notes addition by the UNESCO Atlas of the Worlds Languages in Danger of category of unsafe to definition of language endangerment, defined as most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains. Echoes Krauss estimate that only 10% of the worlds languages are safe. The emerging consensus is that 50% of the worlds languages will be lost in the 21 st century. Uses the sizes of languages in family (i.e. number of speakers) as estimator of endangerment. Ethnologue contains 116 language families, of which 56 are judged endangered and 38, potentially endangered. Also uses Sapirs notion of linguistic stock to provide more accurate basis for considering linguistic diversity: 342 stocks in Ethnologue, of which 194 are endangered, 106 potentially endangered. The Americas, the Pacific, and Asia dominate in both linguistic diversity and endangerment.

Whalen, D. H. and Gary F. Simons. Forthcoming. Endangered language families. Ms Takes on unexplored question of the endangerment/extinction of entire language families, using notion of linguistic stock (the largest subgroups of related languages that are reconstructable (2)) to examine the worlds linguistic diversity. Data set includes 372 [note conflict with figure of 342 from presentation] linguistic stocks with at least one living language as of 1950; of these 15% (50 stocks) are found to have become extinct with another 27% (102 stocks) moribund. A loss of 50% of spoken languages this century would entail the extinction of an additional 25% of linguistic stocks; 90% language death would leave only 11% of the stocks with one safe language. Provides list of vitality of linguistic stocks by world area from worst to best: Americas, Pacific, Asia, Africa, Europe. The languages lost carry great social significance for the peoples involved, and the resulting gaps in our knowledge of human language limit our attempts to understand language in its ultimate range of expression (4). Ethnologue lists a total of 7,413 languages in existence as of 1950, when it first began tracking languages. Two key sources exist for estimating large numbers of endangered languages: Ethnologue (Lewis 2009) and UNESCOs Atlas of the Worlds Languages in Danger (Mosely 2010). Divides endangered languages into three categories: extinct, moribund, and viable, defining the middle term after Krauss (1992). Size of population correlates well with language endangerment. 25% of all languages spoken today have been classified as moribund. Seven languages with more than one million speakers are classified by UNESCO as definitely endangered, i.e. moribund: Emilian-Romagnol, Kangdi, Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese, Romani, Yiddish (Israel). The median size of the 4

languages in the world today is 7,500 speakers (12). The 90 th percentile for language size is 340,000 speakers. 40% of linguistic diversity as reflected in stocks present in 1950 has already suffered death and doom. The loss of languages reduces the range of phenomena that linguists can address and makes claims for universal features of language more and more tenuous (14). While the loss of any language without good documentation leaves a significant gap in the knowledge base of humankind, the loss of a whole linguistic stock without documentation leaves an even bigger gap (15). The decision of whether to cling to or abandon a minority language rests with the community itself, not linguists. The loss of language families entails the loss of important information that can clarify the history and prehistory of a region. Provides examples of types of important data provided by endangered languages. The re-evolution of todays range of language familiesnot just individual languageswould take tens of thousands of years (17).

Hammarstrm, Harald. The Status of the Least Documented Language Families in the World, Language Documentation and Conservation Vol. 4 (2010), 177-212. Rating: 4 Summary: This paper presents a catalogue of all known language families that are not yet extinct, but all of whose member languages are essentially undocumented. Evaluation: The paper builds somewhat upon Simons and Whalen (2009), but utilizes a larger data base than they did. Hammarstrm bases his figures on what specialist literature exists as well as on the population and endangerment figures from Ethnologue 16 (Lewis 2009). The author presents no argument or original concepts; his aim is merely to list the least documented language families so as to aid linguists in setting priorities for language documentation work. The survey provided is interesting and tantalizing in just how little we know about these languages. Details: The author presents a table and detailed breakdown of 27 language families, all but four of which are one-member families: isolates. The overwhelming majority of the families listed are to be found in Papua New Guinea. Four hail from South America, two from India, and one from Africa. In order to be included, the language families had to meet four criteria: 1) The family must be known through at least a wordlist, however modest in size; 2) The family must not be demonstrably related to any other known family as far as our present state of knowledge permits us to know; 3) The family must not be extinct; 4) All languages in the family must be poorly documented, meaning there has been no grammar sketch and no ongoing documentation effort. The author maintains a website 5

(http://haraldhammarstom.ruhosting.nl/least_documented/ ) for changes and updates to his listing. As of 2/2/12 at 7:13am, this URL is listed as not found. Quotes: There are several legitimate reasons for pursuing language documentation (cf. Krauss 2007 for a fuller discussion). Perhaps the most important reason is for the benefit of the speaker community itself (see Voort 2007 for some clear examples). Another reason is that it contributes to linguistic theory: if we understand the limits and distribution of diversity of the worlds languages, we can formulate and provide evidence for statements about the nature of language (Brenzinger 2007; Hyman 2003; Evans 2009; Harrison 2007). From the latter perspective, it is especially interesting to document languages that are the most divergent from the ones that are well-documented in other words, those that belong to unrelated families (117).

Crystal, David. 2003. Endangered languages: what should we do now? In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 1:18-34. London: SOAS.

Calls for focus on new horizons now that the basic theoretical questions of language endangerment have been answered to general satisfaction. Need to develop an applied preventive linguistics and typology of intervention (1), as well as bridge the gap between academic and general, public awareness of problem. Three criteria must be met before progress with an endangered language can be made: 1) bottom-up interest (1) from the affected communities themselves; 2) top-down interest (2) from all levels of government; 3) cash. Cites the Babel Myth (2) as a factor in lack of public commitment to recognizing the problem: the belief that a single language on earth guarantees a mutually intelligible and therefore peaceful planet. While magazines and radio have begun coverage of language endangerment in earnest, TV has lagged far behind in coverage of most linguistic issues. What approaches there have been on TV concentrate only on local populations and not the larger language endangerment picture or what it means to all of us. There is little to no interest in language death among the general population; this interest must be both intellectual and emotional. The Great Divide isthe gap between consciousness and conscience (4). Since art communicates most directly to the widest possible audience, we must harness its power in order to spread the word. Up to now, precious little coverage of the phenomenon has been undertaken in the various arts, save, perhaps, for poetry. Such coverage needs to happen in order to get the subject into the three domains where it will have the greatest impact: media, school, and home. Communication with the public is the most neglected side of the linguists profession. To this end, we must: 1) compile an archive or library of metadata about 6

endangered languages; 2) inaugurate a UNESCO prize for outstanding achievement in endangered languages.

Engstrand, Olle. Why are clicks so exclusive? Papers from Fonetik 97, The Ninth Swedish Phonetics Conference, held in Ume, May 28-30, 1997. Reports from the Department of Phonetics, Ume University (PHONUM), 4, 191-194. Rating: 3 Summary: The author develops the thesis that clicks are limited to Africa because their likely development is preconditioned by certain phonetic features that, while rare, are amply represented in African languages. Evaluation: I came to this little paper as a rabbit trail from the previous piece by Whalen that mentioned how, when a language invests in an unusual and difficult sound, it generally overuses it. This is a succinct exploration of an interesting phenomenon that, if nothing else, prompts thought into why certain areal phenomena should be so confined to their respective regions. Details: Clicks have variously been explained away as being particularly difficult from the articulatory perspective or the remnant of some primitive precursor to human speech. Yet these explanations prove unsatisfactory when considered in detail. Labiovelar stops resemble clicks in having a double articulation with a posterior component involving the soft palate and by exhibiting negative oral pressure with an audible click-like sound associated with the labial release. If labiovelars, then, form part of the preconditions for clicks, then why are they too largely restricted to African languages? Perhaps, the author advances, because they come about due to extreme velarization used to enhance auditory effects associated with the implosives (192). [Cf. Mike Cahills talk during phonetics: there are some languages with labiovelars in both S. America and Asia, all near the equatorial belt] The implosives, in turn, auditorily resemble prenasalized stops, which are also common in African languages. Quotes: One of the most striking examples of areal skewness in the worlds sound inventories is the limitation of clicks to the languages of southern Africa. [C]licks are fundamental to the phonologies of many languages of the region. It is rather unusual that clicks should be absent from the overwhelming majority of the worlds languages, but at the same time so dominant in the remaining ones (191). When a sound change has taken place, new sounds appear which provide new preconditions for further development. For example, by developing a voiced vs. voiceless stop contrast where it did not exist before, a language has set up a

new basis for tonogenesis, i.e. the likelihood that a tone contrast will actually emerge in the language is increased (192). It should be noted that the African languages as a group stand out with respect to rate of occurrence of voiced stops in their inventories (Engstrand 1997). In view of this areal preference, it is reasonable to assume that the frequent occurrence of implosives and prenasalized stops in the African languages reflects historical processes whereby stop voicing may have become auditorily enhanced (193).

Ostler, Nicholas. 2003. Desperate straits for languages: how to survive. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 1:168-178. London: SOAS. Since minority language communities are already so small, they tend to be uniquely sensitive to population decline. The majority of the worlds languages have the fewest speakers; the minority, the most. Each language is unique, individual, and irreplaceable; language loss is therefore personal. Yet languages can come back from the brink: Portuguese and English provide two such case studies. In both cases, the fortunes of the languages tracked closely with the political fate of the nation where they originated as mother-tongues. Language loss is often topdown like this, losing its apex first to a foreign tongue which then percolates down (6) to lower echelons of society. Political or social autonomy is highly beneficial for the survival of a language (7). Five factors favor the survival of minority languages: 1) resolute isolation (7); 2) political status (i.e. when a small language has official status for a political entity; e.g. Icelandic); 3) physical survival (i.e. children learn it, the community preserves a common life and territory of their own); 4) literary corpus and literacy; 5) self-conscious tradition (i.e. selfconsciousness as a distinct people with history and identity of their own; selfesteem) (8). Of these five factors, the first both lies outside of the ability of people to control and is, in itself, not an evident blessing to any human community (9). Therefore, to protect a language, we must: 1) give it status; 2) protect transmission and resist intrusion; 3) record, document, and publish; 4) build solidarity at all levels. An appendix outlines the activities of the FEL (Foundation for Endangered Languages). Epps, Patience. Language Endangerment in Amazonia: the Role of Missionaries, Bedrohte Viefalt: Aspects of Langage Death. Jan Wolgemuth and Tyko Dirksmeyer, eds. Berliner Beitrge zur Linguistik. Berlin: Weissensee, 2005. 311-327. Rating: 5

Summary: This article examines language endangerment in the Rio Negro region of the northwest Brazilian amazon and determines that missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, have played a major role in exacerbating the problem. The author criticizes Protestant missionaries in particular for inexpert linguistic work and disingenuous as to their principal aim. Despite the overall critical tone, Epps does cite one example of a case where the efforts of Protestant missionaries help preserve a people and their language from extinction. Evaluation: The piece shows obvious bias against the missionary endeavor and relies too heavily on a few key sources for her complaints. That said, the perspective is important, especially for those training to work with PBT and SIL, if for no other reason than to demonstrate something of the nature of the opposition. Details: The Rio Negro region is home to languages of the Arawak, Tukanoan, and Vaups-Japura (Maku) families, and its inhabitants traditionally practice linguistic exogamy. Today, many people are abandoning their own languages in favor of Tukano and/or Portuguese. Causes of the linguistic devastation of the area include death from disease and massacre, loss of traditional lands and subsistence patterns/cultural norms, and the internalized perspective of the people themselves that they are inferior both socially and economically to the dominant society. Negative interactions between Europeans and native communities in the area stretch back to the 18th century and slavery, colonialism, and the rubber boom of 1870-1920. Catholic missionaries had the greatest impact on the ways of live of those indigenous peoples who survived these depredations. These early missions consciously tried to disrupt the traditional ways of life, breaking up longhouses and even violating ritual taboos and causing social upheaval. They also intimated those knowledgeable of traditional religious practices with vivid threats of hell and damnation if they did not renounce their association with such matters. As a result, much such knowledge was lost. The Catholic missionaries introduced new ceremonies and rituals that had no meaning for the native population. This was particularly true in the area of marriage. The missionaries also impacted linguistic practice by championing single languages as linguae francae, first Lingua Geral, imported from the east coast, then Tukano. They also essentially forced native populations to attend mission boarding schools where Portuguese was the language of instruction and interaction and native tongues were forbidden and severely punished. This situation produced alienation of children from both their cultures and their families. The semi-nomadic, forest-dwelling Hupdh escaped contact with Europeans and missionaries for many years, but, in 1970s, faced with the possibility of incursions by SIL, Salesian Catholic missionaries stepped up their efforts, coercing the Hupdh to live in new, settled villages where they could be civilized and evangelized. Today, most Hupdh still live in these small villages, where their health has declined, the variety of their diet has fallen away, and infant mortality has soared. Skin conditions are rampant due to the perceived need to wear clothes in the humid environment and the lack of soap to wash them and fighting has 9

become endemic as the traditional way of settling quarrels, by splitting groups and going separate ways, is no longer practicable. Traditional culture is declining and no longer being passed on the children. A number of fears and negative attitudes about traditional mores keep the Hupdh from abandoning the villages and returning to their semi-nomadic way of life in the forest. The most powerful Protestant missionary organizations active in the region in the past few decades have been New Tribes Mission and SIL. Both have massive infrastructures and large sources of funding, all devoted to the primary aim of evangelizing indigenous peoples. Both organizations have used linguistics as a front for their missionary activities. The quality of their linguistic work varies. The tactics of NTM in particular during the 1970s and 1980s, including coercion and physical force, have been highly suspect. Missionaries have also used fear as a psychological persuasion, showing pictures of hell that they knew the natives did not distinguish from photographs. Even with gentler tactics, however, coercion is never absent from the missionaries practice due to their status as powerful outsiders with planes, boats, and material wealth. This fact, combined with the ingrained sense of insecurity cultivated in the natives as a result of their collective history with non-indigenous dominance, casts their ability to make informed choices as to their faith and life questionable. In order to gain access to the peoples of the Vaups region, which is an official Indigenous Reserve and closed to non-Catholic missionaries, members of organizations associated with NTM present themselves to the government as NGOs called PROPAS (Program for Self-Sustaining Fishing). The groups settle a missionary family in each of two Hup villages, where they evangelize and voice disapproval of traditional practices like manioc beer and dances. Some missionaries, though, are more respectful of traditional culture and they do help with the importation of more advanced medicine to help fight the kinds of disease contracted from contact with non-Indians. Also, the Protestant missionaries have been largely responsible for turning the tide of cultural decline among the Dw people who have been kept from extinction largely due to such efforts. Though much positive work is done through linguistics by organizations like SIL, often orthographies designed by people with inadequate training create confusion when improved orthographies are introduced, and literacy efforts focus on the reading of culturally unfamiliar texts rather than native narratives, which would prove more effective. The nature of the missionary endeavor itself undermines the promotion of language and native speakers sense of pride. Quotes: [M]issionaries have done much to promote the process of language endangerment in these areas, and relatively little to combat it (p. 3). Quoting Curt Nimuendaj, a German-Brazilian anthropologist (1883-1945): The principal reason for the missionaries aversion to collective habitations isthat they see in them with every reasonthe symbol, the veritable bulwark of the former

10

organization and tradition of the pagan culture that is so contrary to their plans for conversion, for spiritual and social domination (p. 4). The missionaries efforts to break down native ways of life and traditional cultural practices clearly had an effect on the local languages, especially via the gradual eroding of the local peoples sense of confidence in themselves and in the ways of their parents and grandparents. Over time, many Indian people internalized the primitive-civilized dichotomy and strove to become more civilized, which essentially meant adopting a lifestyle more like that of non-Indiansincluding a knowledge of Portuguese (p. 6). Such a separation and alienation of the younger generation from the older is directly implicated in situations of language shift all over the world (p. 7). The Protestant missionaries have tended to be even more active than the Catholics in wiping out native beliefs and practices. While Catholics in general particularly those present in the region todaytolerate the drinking of manioc beer, dancing, and even a certain amount of syncretism between Catholicism and local beliefs, many Protestant missionaries frown on these activities and do their best to put an end to them (p. 9). The Summer Institute of Linguistics, now known by its acronym SIL, is somewhat more sensitive in its approach than is the NTMin particular, it presents its members to the public as linguistic investigators rather than missionaries (p. 10). According to Lewis (1988: 106), the linguistic front put forward by the SIL and the Wycliffe Bible Translators was perceived even by some of its own early members as duplicitous, leading the Wycliffe founder William Cameron Townsend to provide the following argument in its defense: There is a Biblical precedent for [such subterfuge]. Namely, just as Jesus came out of Nazereth disguised very effectively as a carpenter, Wycliffe missionaries go into the field as linguists Was it honest for the son of God to come down to earth and live among men without revealing who he was? (p. 10). [T]he quality of the academic linguistic contributions of SIL missionaries varies widely. While some missionaries do produce sound linguistic documentation, as well as useful orthographies and materials for native-language literacy programs, there are clearly many who do not (p. 10). Lewis (1988: 231) quotes a NTM missionary in Venezuela as saying, they say that alls fair in war, and for us this is war for souls (p. 10). Quoting a letter in 1943 from the director of Brazils Indian Protection Service (SPI), the first drawback we observe after the entry of missionaries into an Indian tribe is the breakdown of tribal fraternity. Indians who became Catholic or Protestant form hostile groups and lose interest in their tribe (p. 12). 11

Moreover, even in the case of a struggling people like the Dw, there is in principle no reason why help must be packaged together with a soul-saving agenda; medical care, schooling, etc. can be provided with no strings attached by local government or NGOs (p. 13). [T]he goal to convert is inherently ethnocentric (p. 14).

Schieffeln, Bambi B. Marking Time: The Dichotomizing Discourse of Multiple Temporalities, Current Anthropology 43, Supplement August-October 2002. S5-S17. Rating: 4 Summary: In the 1970s, Protestant missionizing began in earnest among the Bosavi of Papua New Guinea and Australian missionaries moved into the area and set up permanent residence. This contact led to the introduction into the language of the Kaluli (a sub-group of Bosavi) of notions of Western-style temporality and concomitant ideas of scheduling and organization that were translated into the vernacular and inculcated in the new, uniquely Christian genres of lessons and sermons. The Kaluli thus participated in effecting a fundamental shift in their language in how they talk about and express time that accompanied a wholesale abandonment of traditional reckonings and forms of generic expression, like songs, laments, and traditional narratives, that were associated with the pre-Christian community. Evaluation: Schiffelns discussion is far more data-centered than Epps. The result is less rancor and more even-handedness. While it is likely that the author has a negative perspective on missions and missionary activity, she concentrates on simply providing the facts of the linguistic changes and her analysis of their significance without overly demonizing the forces responsible. She also emphasizes the role played by the community itself. Details: The changes principally had to do with the introduction of a seven-day work week and the traditional twelve month, Gregorian calendar. New terms were generated using the numbers with instrumental case markers (two different instrumental markers, one for days, another for months). Western style, timespecific greetings like a calque for good afternoon were also introduced. At times, Tok Pisin time references were incorporated, especially since the new ways of speaking were associated with cultural advance and Tok Pisin conveyed a sense of sophistication and distance. Another area of change evidenced principally in sermons and lessons was a temporal orientation away from the past and onto the present and future. Traditional ways of recording the past through place names was abandoned. The author first became aware of these linguistic changes while preparing a trilingual Bosavi-English-Tok Pisin dictionary, a process begun in the 12

1970s and continued through the mid 1990s. While rechecking entries from 1984 in 1990, consultants kept determining that certain words or expressions were wrong. When the linguists shared the sources texts that were recorded from the fathers of the consultants, it emerged that what had in fact changed was the culture: words associated with witchcraft, traditional beliefs, and negative emotions like anger, felt no longer to apply to Christianized Kaluli, had been abandoned or changed. Quotes: Innovation co-occurred with the erasure of entire expressive genressong, lament, and traditional narrative that were the moralizing practices of a people (p. S15). The past, cultural or personal, is a special target for fundamentalist Christians. Even thoughts about past traditions, whether real or imagined by missionaries, were considered as impediments to conversion and belief, and local pastors consistently conveyed this message(p. S15). The mission rhetoric repositioned Bosavi people according to its own narrative time frame, one in which everyone would be looking forward to the same thing at the same timethe Second Coming. Everyone would be preparing in the same way; the Bosavi people would be on the same timetable as everyone else. What mattered was only whether they were saved; that would become their only meaningful identity(p.16).

Dobrin, Lise M. et al. 2009. SIL International and the Disciplinary Culture of Linguistics. Language 85: 618-658. A must read for anyone interested in exploring the impact of SIL and Christian missionaries in general on modern linguistics, especially as relates to study of minority and endangered languages and amassing data on little-studied languages. This suite of articles features both pro and con points of view, with a notably negative take on SIL and missionary activities by Patience Epps and Herb Ladley and a positive emic view by Kenneth Olson. The titles and contents of the individual articles are as follows: Dobrin, Lise M. Introduction. 618-619. Dobrin, Lise M. and Jeff Good. Practical language development: Whose mission? 619-629. Focuses on relationship of SIL with academia and tension within academia over the fact that SIL is such a force in minority language study, maintaining both the Ethnologue and a vast infrastructure on which academic linguists must rely. Notes that these functions are notably not being fulfilled by secular academic institutions. 13

Svelmoe, William L. We do not want to masquerade as linguists: A short history of SIL and the academy. 629-635. A good overview of the history and development of SIL and its mission, especially the roles of Townsend and Pike and the controversies in Latin America. Handman, Courtney. Language ideologies, en dangered-language linguistics, and Christianization. 635-639. Examines the impact of missionizing on language ideology and identity maintenance/shift. Interesting discussion on possible negative side to literacy development vis--vis speakers connection to an oral language tradition on pages 638-639. Epps, Patience and Herb Ladley. Sytax, souls, or speakers? On SIL and community language development. 640-646. Contains notable criticisms of SIL for not publishing enough on the languages studied, SIL emphasis on community self-determination especially as regards decision to open community to missionary activity, cultural change as a result of discouragement of traditional practices. Olson, Kenneth S. SIL International: An emic view. 646-652. Details especially the positive work accomplished by SIL and the numerous honors and accolades bestowed by communities and nations in which SIL has worked. Responds explicitly to many of the types of accusations made against the organization in articles such as Epps and Ladley.

II. Moral Imperative


Skutnabb-kangas, Tove, Luisa Maffi, and David Harmon. 2003. Sharing a World of Difference: The Earth's linguistic, cultural and biological diversity. UNESCO, Terralingua, and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International. Begins with interesting Wolof poem on the subject of language loss. Flows into a discussion of biodiversity and its importance for evolution and world ecology. Linguistic and cultural diversity are similar to biodiversity in many ways: both are lost through human mismanagement or maltreatment and takeover by invasive species, both add to the store of total human knowledge of the world and can result in useful and practical advancements of science (cf. medicinal plants and knowledge of them encoded in languages, animal behavior patterns encoded in languages, 14

etc.), both occur in certain key hotspots that often overlap, and each is distributed unequally throughout the world, both are detrimentally affected by the same socioeconomic changes that destroy both ecosystems and traditional cultures. Linguistic diversity even interacts directly with biodiversity insofar as numerous endangered language communities maintain complex systems of traditional ecological knowledge including taxonomies, plant and animal names, and management strategies/practices. Advances the notion that linguistic assimilation is wholly involuntary inasmuch as minority language communities either only have one option (viz. to learn the dominant language and accept it for education and government) or do not have enough knowledge to understand the long-term consequences of their choices when available. Reports results of programs such as that in PNG to include more local, minority languages in formal education while also instructing in the dominant language (English) as a second language: students learned faster, became bilingual, became literate more easily, were more enthusiastic and confident about learning. Also a similar program in Finland with Saami pupils.

Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Chapter. 3 "Lost Words/Lost Worlds" pp. 50 - 77. See especially the first paragraph on p. 51, the last paragraph on p. 77, and skim specific examples in the section on "Lost languages, lost knowledge" on pp. 69 ff.) [L]anguages, like species, are highly adapted to their environments and all extinctions have as their cause environmental change (50). Sudden language death: language dies intact as all speakers are exterminated, often by natural disaster, as with Tamboran language in Indonesia in 1815 volcanic eruption. Also by genocide (Ishi, Yahi tribe). Often it can be difficult to determine when the last speaker of a language has died due to trouble locating remaining speakers and hidden pockets of survival in exceptional cases. Also, rememberers may survive the active use of a language by several generations (52). Gradual language death occurs when knowledge of a language atrophies with time due to desuetude. Words and expressions are forgotten piecemeal, especially when the cultural practice that once underlay them also vanishes. In such cases, general words and expressions usually take precedence over specific ones, as with an Alzheimer patient. Thus, the final generation may not remember a language well enough to permit a linguist to reconstruct its former, healthier form. A languages specific vocabulary is an inventory of the items a culture considers important and which allow it to survive its 15

local ecosystem. Classifier systems, such as that of Dyirbal, tell us something about how the people conceive their world and interact with it. The more complex aspects of languages tend to vanish first because they take longest for children to acquire and the childrens acquisition of them is often interrupted or not adequately supported by the more dominant culture. The ways of thought and perception/conception encoded in languages render them verbal botanies (69) or even verbal astronomies, verbal herpetologies, etc. Human languages are the main agents of cultural transmission. [A] language is part of a complex ecology that must be supported if biodiversity is to be maintained (77).

Davis, Wade. 2003. Cultures at the far edge of the world. A talk given at TED 2003, February 2003, Monterey, California. Duration: 22:44. Ours is only one way of seeing and being in the world. Other cultures demonstrate that there are myriad other ways, each of them successful in their own way, each complete in its own way. The cultural web of life is the ethnosphere: the thoughts, dreams, artistic creations of all humankind throughout time. Just like the biosphere , the ethnosphere is eroding, and at a far greater rate. More than half of the languages, the old growth forests of the mind, are threatened. Approximately every two weeks, the last speaker of some language dies. Takes the listeners on a tour of the ethnosphere, noting and commenting on numerous minority cultures and languages like the Waorani, Voodoo devotees in Haiti, etc. Talks at length about ayahuasca and the specifics of its preparation and botanical knowledge necessary for it. Unlike genocide, ethnocide is not universally condemned, and is even applauded as a development strategy. Loss of diversity reduces the human imagination to a mundane modality of thought. The world deserves to exist in a diverse way.

Manatowa-Bailey, Jacob. 2007. On the brink. Cultural Survival Quarterly 31(2):12-16. Language death is due to psychological war (12): it requires getting into the head and mind of the affected people, usually through education programs in a dominant language. In order to counteract such effects, large-scale programs placed entirely in the hands and control of the local communities must be put in place to provide immersion experiences for learners. The size of the educational undertaking is not as important as the quality of the content and interaction. The needs for large training enterprises and funding are the two major obstacles to such approaches. Current funding provided by the US government is woefully inadequate to the task. Mother-tongues are key to identity and healthy personhood. 16

Kipp, Darrell. 2007. Swimming in words. Cultural Survival Quarterly 31(2):36-43. Describes authors background, education off the reservation, and eventual return to seek his roots and give back to the native community by educating youth in their own tribal history. Asserts that personal and cultural identity stems from language, and language revitalization rehabilitates both people and their culture.

UNESCO. 2008. Thematic debate: Protecting indigenous and endangered languages and the role of languages in promoting EFA in the context of sustainable development. UNESCO Executive Board, 180th session. Laments UNESCOs track record regarding languages and calls for action now on behalf of endangered languages. Languages should be equal in the eyes of policy makers. The vision of one uniform and unifying language is a fantasy. Language is, by its very nature, heteroglossic (2), breaking the world down into separate and distinct entities, groups, categories. Prematurely interrupting use of the mother-tongue results in interruption of cognitive and academic development. By encouraging use of mother-tongues in education, governments can foster the development of scientific and technical vocabulary necessary to the advancement of science and industry, thereby combatting the North-South divide. UNESCO has helped to encourage this technicalization (4) of mother-tongues. Thus mothertongues play an important role in education and social and economic development. Language contributes to shaping individual and collective identity. It is an intrinsic part of us. It is the vehicle for transmission of the cultural heritage from generation to generation (8). Languages are essential for the transmission of knowledge and information to all the components of society and we must acknowledge their strategic importance if we want to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) goals. Languages are integration factors, for instance, and, in this regard, play a strategic role in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, the first MDG. They are vehicles for literacy, learning, and the acquisition of necessary life skills, and are thus crucial for the second MDG, achieving universal primary education. They are absolutely essential for preventing HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and thus in achieving the sixth MDG. Since prevention programmers are efficient only if they are implemented in languages understood by their target audience. Lastly, they transmit indigenous knowledge on natural resource management, and thus play a 17

key role in preserving the environment as envisaged in the seventh MDG. None of these goals may be achieved without the use of vernacular languages(9). The costs of losing linguistic diversity are high and may jeopardize international cooperation to promote sustainable development, intercultural dialogue, and the achievement of the MDGs and EFA goals (10).

Maffi, Luisa. 2001. Toward the integrated protection of language and knowledge as a part of indigenous peoples' cultural heritage. Cultural Survival Quarterly 24(4):32-36. [T]he extinction crisis affecting the world's biodiversity is closely related, in its causes and consequences, to the crisis threatening the world's indigenous and traditional peoples, their languages, and their cultural traditions(32). Participants agreed that the connections between the different manifestations of the diversity of life -- biological, cultural, and linguistic -- reside in the intimate link between language and knowledge, including traditional knowledge about the environment. Language, they argued, is central to people's ability to conceptualize and understand the world and to act on it. Human culture is a powerful adaptation tool, and language both enables and conveys much cultural behavior. And while language cannot express all knowledge, beliefs, and values, it does represent the main instrument by which people elaborate, develop, and transmit such ideas. Conference participants concluded that the processes leading to the disenfranchisement of indigenous and traditional peoples -- and to the replacement of their world views, ways of life, and languages with those of dominant groups -are part and parcel of the processes leading to environmental deterioration and destruction (32-33). There is increasing concern on the part of indigenous groups about the appropriation of their native knowledge of plant (especially medicinal plants) and animal life by the wider world. Indigenous peoples the world over have increasingly identified their languages -- along with traditional knowledge, beliefs, values, ritual, folklore, crafts, and biodiversity -- as part of their cultural heritage. They see their cultures and languages as intimately linked with their lands and territories. And they consider the maintenance and continued development of their languages as an integral part of their cultural vitality (33). The concept of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) alone is insufficient to protect indigenous knowledge as reflected in endangered languages, we must also prevent erosion of those languages due to forces of languages of wider communication. New and special laws like the 1989 International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples no. 169 (ILO 169) are needed. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), especially Articles 8j, 10c, and 18.4 is also relevant, deal[ing] with establishing appropriate agreements for the development and utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices and the equitable sharing of benefits deriving from this utilization. The most comprehensive and advanced 18

international document produced so far for the protection of indigenous peoples' rights, including key aspects related to indigenous knowledge and languages, is the Draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (34). UNESCO has also had a significant role to play. Cultural and linguistic rights form part of human rights. It has often been noted that for indigenous peoples not knowledge per se but rather wisdom may be a goal. And in discussing the Western discourse of rights, legal scholar Lyndel Prott has asked whether thinking in terms of rights is our only, let alone our best, option. She observes: Many traditional communities think in terms of the obligations of the human community to earth and the other species on it. Perhaps the idea may be the beginning of a new normative framework for the preservation of heritage (37).

Wikipedia. 2009. Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples . See below.

United Nations. 2007. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Adopted by United Nations General Assembly, 13 September 2007. Though it is not legally binding, the Declaration can act as a kind of soft law, influencing the behavior of nations by virtue of the firm international standard it sets. One could use its basic tenets to argue that of all the basic human rights common to all peoples of the earth to education, health, opportunity language and culture are perhaps the most fundamental, as they underlie all the rest. A communitys language holds the key to its identity and provides the chief vehicle for transmission of the vast storehouse of knowledge and custom that undergird its culture. If a groups language is permitted to pass silently out of existence without study, documentation, and attempts at revival and revitalization, that loss deprives them of their most basic sense of self and the linchpin of their individual and collective will. We cannot discriminate against such groups, but must act to promote their participation in matters that concern them and assist them in maintaining and strengthening their own institutions and traditions as preserved and transmitted through their language.

Frank, Paul. 2008. The Glory of God through the Peoples and Languages of the Earth. ms.

19

It is common to talk about language and culture as barriers to the spread of the Gospel. Linguistic and cultural diversity are not barriers to Gods purposes; they are crucial elements for achieving His purposes [as reflected in Revelation 5:9 and 7:9-10] (1). [W]ere mistaken if we conclude that the diversity of languages and peoples that resulted [from the Tower of Babel] was contrary to the eternal purposes of God. Without the diversity of nations, tribes, peoples, and languages, Gods purposes are hindered, not helped. It is a tragedy whenever any person fails to trust God because he or she could not hear the Gospel in a language they could understand. It is also a tragedy when any person has to cease being who God made them including their linguistic and cultural identity in order to become a Christian (1). [NB: I do, though, think we are on shaky ground with the supposition that God made our linguistic and cultural identities: He confounded humanitys common language, but the separate developments of those initial sparks of linguistic diversity, as well as the cultural paths of the people groups, lay, after the initial confusion, entirely in human hands. As to Pauls quote in Acts 17:26-27, I do not think he is speaking literally. He begins by noting From one man: God created in Adam the seed of all human groups; he appointed the times and seasons for them and, in expelling them from Eden, sent them forth to their eventual locations on the globe. He could not have actually determined who should live exactly where, however, lest he destroy our free agency and make rebels against divine decree of any human who moves his residence. Cf. God made it a beautiful language, full of expressive power and grammatical complexity (3).] God created cultural and linguistic diversity and intends them for his glory. We need to pray and work that His will might be done on earth a diversity of peoples and languages as part of His church. I believe that God designed cultural variety in the world just as He designed a variety of gifts within the Body of Christ. Though we affirm that the Scriptures can be communicated through any and every language, it may be that not everything that could be said about God and His creation can be said equally well through any one language. In some strange way each language is necessary, both as a means for expressing a peoples unique identity and as a means for saying things about the world and about God that cannot quite be said through any other language (2). So not only do we translate the Scriptures. We also help stabilize languages that are threatened and cultures that are being eroded. We help people develop their languages so that in a changing, hostile world they can continue using their languages to express their unique identity in the face of the onslaught of dominant languages and cultures (3).

Whalen, D. H. How the study of endangered languages will revolutionize linguistics. In P.van Sterkenburg (Ed.), Linguistics today: Facing a greater challenge. Amsterdam:John Benjamins, 2004. 321-342.

20

Rating: 4 Summary: The author examines on side of the two way interaction between linguistics and endangered languages, considering not the usual question of what linguistics has to offer endangered language communities, but what the study of endangered languages may offer linguistics. He highlights the burgeoning use of the internet for data publication and increased quantity and quality of data stemming from work on endangered languages. He argues that these features will spur the field to greater unity and theoretical productivity. Evaluation: Reading this article side-by-side with those of Pennycock et al. cited above makes the authors point of view seem nave in the extreme. This navet comes especially to the fore in his appraisal of internet technology; one begins to wonder whether the piece was not written in 1984 rather than 2004 for all its discussion of the new technologies available through the web. That fault aside, the discussion of the practical ways in which modern linguistic theory may be advanced through the study of endangered languages proves quite useful, especially for helping to convince a somewhat skeptical field of the value of this new subspecialty. Details: The author lists four ways in which the increasingly widespread practice of making linguistic data available online will revolutionize linguistics: 1) linguists will work from the same data rather than individual data sets; 2) the texts can be searched easily; 3) the sound files will be available and not just transcriptions; 4) work will progress on a unified ontology for linguistics (324). By ontology in the non-philosophical sense, he means a description of objects and their relationships to each other. He thinks that the rich data made available through the study of endangered languages and web publishing will permit linguists to discover the linguistic periodic table of the elements and cease being trapped in area-specific grammatical terms, like the obviative case in Algonquian, that exists nowhere outside of Algonqiuan languages. One such unified ontology project is already under way, the General Ontology for Linguistic Desciprion or GOLD funded through the NSF and working through the EMELD project. The idea behind this concept is that increased availability of better raw data will force a higher standard of descriptive adequacy (331). He notes that older archival materials, like magnetic media with or without accompanying transcriptions, present too many technical challenges for the researcher to be of much use; it is difficult or impossible to align the transcriptions with the recorded material or too difficult to extract the material from the recordings. Not only is internet publication more user friendly and less costly than other means of dissemination, it is also useful for native speaker and heritage communities as well, who are now beginning to develop strong web presences. The study of endangered languages offers particular advantages over that of unendangered languages: 1) the time scale at which we understand linguistic change will be expanded; 2) claims for universals and language acquisition will be better tested; 3) the effects of literacy can be better assessed by comparison 21

to the largely unwritten endangered language traditions; 4) the linguistic ontology will be more complete. On the first point, he notes that more material from farther flung language families will enable comparison of a larger set of relations to deepen the time scale. Note of interest: !Xu~ has 95 consonants and 24 monophthongal vowels, and a successful orthography was developed (337)! Quotes: Indeed, it is through these archives that the languages can be called sleeping rather than dead various Native American groups have used this term, as outlined in Hinton (2001) (321). Suffice it to say that language loss in the modern world seldom reflects a voluntary choice on the part of the language community (322). But for looking at more unusual languages, we are at a stage where essentially one or two linguists have access to the raw data, and everyone else gets snippets of their analysis (324-325). We also know that transcriptions, even the most narrow ones, are an idealization of the signal (326). Yet the most extreme cases of language differentiation are surely to be found in the highly divergent language families, many of which are faced with extinction as an entire family, not just a member language or two. Most of the Australian languages, for example, are moribund (331). The Australian linguistics community was energized in the early 1980s to begin a systematic recording of all the Australian languages, and this project succeeded with a thoroughness that has not been replicated elsewhere (331). [Cf. David Wilkins piece above.] Languages that invest in unusual consonant types appear to rely on them heavily (Hombert and Maddieson 1998) (335). Currently, there seems to be no pattern of language (other than the auxiliary system of reading) that requires explicit instruction (336). Writing is parasitic on speech, as we know (e.g. Coe 1992) (337). Writing makes a language more conservative and makes older forms available on a regular basis, both enriching and complicating the language environment (337). It is only when we add in the features of the typologically distant and unusual languages that our theories really get a workout (339). We have reached a stage in the study of language at which it is no longer ethical for a linguist not to consider working on an endangered language. This is 22

not to say that all linguists must work on an endangered language: There [sic] are many valid reasons why a linguist might decide that a nonendangered language is the most appropriate one to study. But not to ask the question is insupportable (340).

Hale, Ken. 1992. Language endangerment and the human value of linguistic diversity. Language 68: 35-41. In this summary piece to the general suite of articles on language endangerment and death, Hale takes the now majority view of language as cultural production, arguing A language and the intellectual productions of its speakers are often inseparable (36). His discussion details the situation of Damin, an auxiliary language of the Australian Aboriginal language Lardil, which was used only by initiated men and taught to them only once they were being initiated. Damin is truly unique phonologically, in that it has click consonants found elsewhere only in Africa, and lexically, in that each word in Damin, which corresponds to one or more Lardil words, provides an abstract name for a logically cohesive family of concepts. This is the secret to the languages being able to be learned in a day by male initiates. The intellectual treasure (40) of Damin was lost with the death of the last fluent user of the language several years ago (40). If revival were instituted, perhaps a new Damin tradition could be created and sustained, but the original could never be regained and will remain forever lost. And the desctruction of this tradition must be ranked as a disaster, comparable to the destruction of any human treasure (40).

III. Digital Recording


Plichta, Bartek and Mark Kornbluh. 2002. Digitizing speech recordings for archival purposes. Ms Discusses the theory and practice of digital recording and analog-digital conversion, concentrating on explaining why the standard DVD quality of 24 bit, 96kHz is considered a best practice. Also explains the Sampling or Nyquist Theorem (sample rate must be greater than twice the highest frequency in the signal), Dither, and Oversampling.

IV. Metadata
NISO. 2004. Understanding metadata. Bethesda, MD: National Information Standards Organization. 23

Defines 3 types of metadata: descriptive, structural, and administrative. Descriptive metadata provides a description of the material for the purposes of discovery and identification. Structural metadata indicates how the material is put together, what its components are, how it is ordered, etc. Administrative metadata provides information to help manage the material, like when it was created, file type, how it was created, other technical aspects of its production, etc. There are several subsets of administrative metadata: Rights management metadata provides information about the intellectual property rights involved in the material and governs access to it. Preservation metadata contain information required to archive and preserve the material.

Simons, Gary, Steven Bird, and Joan Spanne. 2008. OLAC metadata usage guidelines. Open Language Archives Community. Defines all of the elements of the Dublin Core metadata standard and describes and illustrates how they apply to language resources. This is really a document aimed at archivists and data interchange implementers.

Bergqvist, Henrik. 2007. The role of metadata for translation and pragmatics in language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 4:163-173. London: SOAS. Language documentation should be accompanied by a thick description of a non-linguistic nature (Abstract 1) or metadata, providing information about the totality of the situation of the recording. This information may well be superfluous to the actual linguistic analysis, but due to the archival concerns of documentary linguistics, it is reasonable to request for the purposes of preservation and management.

Society for Ethnomusicology, 2001. A manual for documentation fieldwork and preservation for ethnomusicologists, 2nd edition. Chapter 1, "Documentation," pages 5-10. Lists specific information that needs to be recorded in metadata. Very basic. Spanne, Joan. 2008. Metadata: Why, What and How (the Who is You). Presentation for Audio and Video Techniques, GIAL, 29 July 2008. Briefly describes five types of metadata: descriptive or discovery, administrative, structural, technical, rights. Discusses some details from archivists viewpoint. Definitions not really clear. 24

V. Sharable Documentation
Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:165191 Argues for separating what, previously, were considered two parts of descriptive linguistics: collection of primary data through recordings and linguistic analysis of that data. Thus there is the field of documentary linguistics which engages in documentary activity and produces a language documentation, on the one hand, and, on the other, the field of descriptive linguistics, which engages in descriptive activity and produces a language description. The former of these two fields may either be conceived fairly moderately as a distinct domain within the larger framework of descriptive linguistics (language documentation as edited field notes) or, more radically, as an entirely separate and methodologically distinct field, for which language documentation can be characterized as radically expanded text collection. This latter proposal seeks to reverse the interdependency of these two fields: conventionally, documentary activity was seen as ancillary to descriptive activity; now descriptive activity is seen as ancillary to the documentary activity, i.e. part of a broad set of techniques applied in compiling and presenting a useful and representative corpus of primary documents of the linguistic practices found in a given speech community (2). The term descriptive is primarily analytic. It became associated with the process of collecting primary data through its historical opposition to historical/comparative and generative/explanatory/formal linguistics. Table 1 (p. 4) presents these oppositions usefully. But the results, procedures, and methodological issues attendant upon data collection and analysis differ considerably (see Table 2, p. 5). That said, it is also true that, in order to carry out either task, one must perform transcriptions and translation, which necessarily involves phonetic, phonological, and morphological analysis. Because of this overlap, the tendency has been to blur the distinctions between descriptive and documentary linguistics. Another key reason for regarding the two activities separately, however, involves the fact that a collection, without analysis, might well be useful to a variety of other fields and even to the language community itself, whereas an analysis without detailed data collection would not. Also, so long as both collection and analysis are lumped together, data collection will be inevitably undervalued and neglected. A clear separation between documentation and description will ensure that the collection and presentation of primary data receive the theoretical and practical attention they deserve (7). A language description aims at the record of a language, conceived of as a system of abstract elements, constructions and rules which constitute the invariant underlying structure of the utterances observable in a speech community (9). A language documentation aims at the record of the linguistic practices and traditions of a speech community (9, italics original). The latter of these two is much more comprehensive. Because it prepares for such a comprehensive record of potential use to a broad range of disciplines, the theoretical underpinnings of language documentation have to be 25

broad, drawing on a broad variety of language-related (sub-) disciplines (10). One of the major theoretical challenges for documentary linguistics, then, is the task of synthesizing a coherent framework for language documentation from all of these disciplines (11).

Woodbury, Anthony C. 2003. Defining language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 1:35-51. London: SOAS. A survey of the history of documentary linguistics with predictions as to its future. Documentation is as old as the early 20th century structuralist shift toward the synchronic perspective and the Historical Particularism of Franz Boas and Boas student Leonard Bloomfield. Nevertheless, in the past 15 years, there has been a shift toward language documentation becoming a field in its own right, largely as a result of advancements in technology. It has brought about a revolution in both the magnitude and the quality of linguistic documentation (2). The shift also resulted from increasing emphasis on diversity as a central, organizing question in linguistics (2, bold original). Concentrations on social diversity, the humanistic value of language as critical to intellectual endeavor, and endangerment have also helped to effect the shift. Endangerment was not a new concept, but Ken Hales piece in Language 1992 and other similar calls to action helped place it front and center. Led to development of major organizations and funding sources: ELF, FEL, Volkswagons Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen, and Lisbet Rausing Charitable Funds Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at SOAS. There was also considerable work within endangered language communities, such as the indigenous language immersion movement with the concept of Language Nests. The key shift in conception that underlies language documentation is that it is discourse-centered (Sherzer 1990) That [sic] is, direct representation of naturally occurring discourse is the primary project, while description and analysis are contingent, emergent byproducts which grow alongside primary documentation but are always changeable and parasitic on it (5). In the past, the documentation was epiphenomenal in terms of the whole project (5) of language description. In this model, though, [d]ata itself isnt independently theorized, and is ultimately neglected on a number of theoretical and practical levels (6). Data needed to be theorized as documentation. Explanatory and analytical material is coming to be seen as annotating the documentation, rather than the pyramidal model of older days that placed grammars and dictionaries at the apex as though the endpoint of documentation. The corpus of words and texts should be augmented with recordings of the native community discussing the recorded words and texts, such that a kind of metacorpus is established. So too a dialectical relationship is established between corpus and apparatus: they inform each other. One of the chief challenges in documentary linguistics is the wide range of agendas 26

surrounding language documentation, especially within the native communities. No child left behind had a chilling effect on enthusiasm for Cupik immersion programs in Chevak , Alaska. Enumerates some agreed-upon characteristics of a good corpus; it is: diverse, large, ongoing, distributed (i.e. spread out among many different contributors), opportunistic, ethical, with transparent (i.e. anyone can pick them up and understand and use them at any time) and preservable, ethical, and portable materials. Documentary linguistics is also coming to include archiving as a vital part of its endeavors. Ends with some observations drawn from his experiences at UT Austin regarding training and coursework at the Ph.D. level.

Boerger, Brenda H. 2011. To BOLDly go where no one has gone before. Language Documentation and Conservation 5:208-233 Report on several documentary projects that utilized the BOLD method, their results and some modifications/refinements that could be made in BOLD as a consequence. Argues that BOLD should be required of future students since the pace of language loss far exceeds that of new documentary projects: something with BOLDs time sensitivity will have to be incorporated into fieldwork. BOLDs three distinctive characteristics are that its basic, oral, and strives for breadth first, not depth. And the documenter need not be a linguist per se, but a trained paralinguist who may even be a member of the community under study. Notes that the careful speech component of BOLDs oral transcriptions can aid phonological analysis and identifying word breaks. It also facilitates written transcription. Also briefly discusses the Extended Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS) which is used to assess language vitality. Waiting until we can do it all and do it right, by whatever definition we use, will not result in corpora which capture the speech practices of communities around the world before they disappear (231). Suggests that use of BOLD method to gather a documentary corpus be a requirement of graduate linguistics training in the same way that study of a non-Indo-European language often is. Ends by defining a further sub-field of conservationist linguistics which would concentrate on language revitalization which falls outside the widely quoted definition of documentary linguistics formulated by Himmelmann (1998).

VI. Globalizing Context


Tollefson, J. 2006. Critical Theory in Language Policy. In Thomas Ricento (ed.), An Introduction to Language Policy Theory and Method, pp. 42-59. Oxford: Blackwell.

27

A critical approach to language policy acknowledges that policies often create and sustain various forms of social inequality, and that policy-makers usually promote the interest of dominant social groups (42). Tollefsons research examines the role of language policies in social, political, and economic inequality, with the aim of developing policies that reduce various forms of inequality (43). This activist research champions language revitalization and explicitly denigrates claimed stances of objectivity or distance from subjects. CLP also looks at the invisible, ideological processes by virtue of which social inequality can be made to seem the natural condition of social systems. Two assumptions from critical theory underlie CLP: 1) that structural categories like race, gender, and class are central explanatory factors in all social life (44) and 2) that examination of research methodology and epistemology are inseparable from ethical standards and commitments to social justice. Even the word research is fraught with problematic associations with European imperialism and colonialism in the minds of the colonized. CLP is especially concerned with the roles mother-tongue speakers should play in research and how native communities create and sustain preferred forms of knowledge. Most CLP researchers are committed to involving the language speakers themselves in policy decisions and participation in the process. There is also a key focus on the ideas of power as implicit in all human relationships, struggle for social justice, colonization as a mental as well as physical process of encroachment by market mechanisms and bureaucratic control on the realm of family and other primary interaction, hegemony and ideology that are built into social systems and become internalized as common sense, and resistance in terms of the way in which ethnolinguistic minorities may undermine the basic logic of dominant social systems by sustaining alternative social systems (48). Two special approaches to language policy pioneered by CLP are the historical-structural approach (which emphasizes the influence of social and historical factors on language policy and use and assumes that language policy research is inescapably political (49)) and governmentality (which shifts focus to the indirect acts of governing that shaped individual and group language behavior.the techniques and practices of politicians, bureaucrats, educators, and other state authorities at the micro-level (49-50). CLP places economic concerns and the nation-state and all the accompanying issues at the center of research into language policy, as well as developing rationales for language maintenance and revitalization.

Lewis, M. Paul. 2008. The what and why of language-based development. Chapter 1 of an in-progress Handbook on Managing Language-based Development. Language unifies communities and distinguishes them from other communities. The connection between language and identity is so tight that often groups are known by the name of their language or their language by the name of the group or 28

the place where they live. Provides definition of minority language community: a group with a shared identity where the language of identity is overshadowed by one or more dominant languages (2). MLCs lack adequate capacity to maintain the unifying and communicative uses of language for the long run, which puts them at a disadvantage in a number of ways. They have limited participation in the political system, limited opportunities for formal education, limited economic resources, limited chances of holding onto their language and culture. Minority language communities face significant obstacles in meeting their ongoing needs in all areas of life (3). MLCs have limited access to information because it is unavailable in a language they have proficiency in. Most MLCs score low on Fishmans Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) that provides a way to assess the vitality of language and culture maintenance. All language communities need to be able to transmit life-crucial knowledge, (3), which includes information, skills and values relating to all areas of life that a community needs in order to create and sustain its own well being [sic] (4). Life-crucial knowledge also includes knowledge of identity and heritage; knowledge for dealing with political, economic, health, and spiritual problems; and external knowledge that will expand and improve the communitys way of life. Minority language communities are threatened if they lack the capacity and resources to transmit life-crucial knowledge (4). Argues that even though transmitting traditional knowledge and gaining external knowledge both involve processes of translation that may do harm to the nuances expressed, nonetheless gaining external knowledge does not have to mean the relegation of the heritage language to museum mode (5) as being deemed of no use in communicating about the complexities of modern life. Minority language communities deal with multiple identities and multiple languages and must determine which languages they will use for each (5). Next he turns to a discussion of language planning, which usually deals with political, economic, social problems that are not language problems per se but can be solved through a change in language use or structure or both. Language planning is overt, directed, purposeful, language change brought about in order to solve some identified problem (6). Language planning consists of three major components: status planning (having to do with language policy), corpus planning (having to with language form) and acquisition planning (having to do with users of the language(s)). The major criticism of language planning is that it tends to be undertaken and controlled by those in power and does not build capacity among the MLC to solve their own problems going forward. It has been called planning for inequality by critics, and referred to negatively as language (or social) engineering (7). A preferable methodology with which to address the needs of MLCs is language-based development, which is designed to be more participatory and collaborative. Rather than the top-down approach associated with language planning, language-based development moves from the bottom-up, starting with the desires and aspirations of the MLCs. It is holistic, results oriented, languageaware, empowering, and works from the inside out and bottom up. Since the transmission of Life-Crucial Knowledge operates across geographic space, through 29

social space, and over time, Language-based development must take these dimensions into account. The goals identified by the MLC for the scope of their efforts to sustain the transmission of Life-Crucial Knowledge fall into 3 general categories: sustainable identity, sustainable oracy, sustainable literacy. The choice of which category or categories to pursue or how depends on the GIDS level the MLC is at or desires to be at. The Miami nation prefers not to think of their language as extinct, but as sleeping (11). Some of the scholarly literature has used the term minoritized (12) language to refer to MLCs so as to emphasize the role of disempowerment, lack of resources, and unequal access to education have played. An on-going debate in linguistics has even begun to question the very notion of what a language is, preferring to think in terms of a discourse that changes; its continuity and systematicity reflect merely the partial setting or sedimentation of frequently used forms into temporary subsystems (13). In this view, language, as traditionally conceived, is a myth. Perhaps a more valid version of this viewpoint is the notion of viewing language as being something more dynamic and less a static object, a core of generally shared features with increasing amounts of variation the further you move from the core. What we have generally identified as a language and thought of as an isolated unit, is seen through the lens of contact linguistics not to be an entirely homogenous unit and often has fuzzy edges. Thus, language changes over time as the linguistic markers of a particularly valued identity gain in usage (and become more and more sedimented into common practice) while those of less desirable identities fade away and are forgotten (13). [L]inguistic differences are in fact the realization of differences in identity and are manipulated to re-inforce and dynamically construct an identity (13). Fishman was adamant that language restoration and revitalization must proceed through his GIDS scale one step at a time in order to prove effective; no steps could be skipped. According to Fishman (1991), language is inextricably linked to culture in three ways: indexically, symbolically, synecdochally.

Bonk, Jonathan. 2000. Engaging Escobar ... And Beyond. In William D. Taylor (ed.), Global Missiology for the 21st Century: The Iguassu Dialogue, pp. 47-54. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Deals with global, multi-ethnic Christianity in the post-globalization world. Cites Lammin Sannehs Translating the Message and deals with the shift in Christianity from North to South, rich to poor (except for the money center) and the kaleidoscopicvariety (48) that sometimes endangers unity. Our Scriptures remind us that God has always found it difficult to work with or through comfortably secure people (48). Only the imitable gospel, incarnate at the level of person to person, will spare us from the pitfalls of propaganda and jingoism that sometimes substitute for genuine Christian mission (49). Information exchange is not mission because it can remain aloof from personal experience and feeling. Technologically 30

reliant communication can thus become a distancing power that undermines real understanding, solidarity, and commitment one to another (49). Suggests that the modern term develop is only the most threadbare of disguises for a time when it was unabashedly assumed that a part of the missionarys task was to civilize (50). Discusses the globalization juggernaut (50) and its symptoms: North-South divide, increase in wealth gap between richest and poorest, imbalance of resources.

Ricento, Thomas, Introduction, Revisiting the Mother-Tongue Question in Language Policy, Planning, and Politics. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 154 (2002), 1-9. Rating: 3 Summary: Beginning with statements from a UNESCO report in 1953 and German linguist Leo Weisgerber to the effect that mother-tongue is integral to identity and necessary to proper education, this collection examines the theoretical and practical problems that attach to the generally supposed linkage between language, culture, and identity. The fact of individuals claiming multiple mother-tongues, raised bi- or multilingual, presents challenges to the general view. The fact of competing claims of mother-tongue groups to social, economic, and educational dominance likewise raises practical problems for this view. As certain of the authors in the collection show, policies of education in vernaculars have served both to empower and oppress, or rather, even as they empower one group, they oppress another. Thus the collection examines the political, social, and ideological dimensions of MT. Evaluation: As any good introduction should, this brief note proposes some substantial food for thought, significantly problematizing the facile credo found so often in literature on minority and endangered languages that language is the key to identity and the lynchpin of cultural survival. The discussion is necessarily superficial, serving only to spark interest to spur the reader on to consider the articles in the collection. Details: The introduction gives a brief overview of the contents and discussion of each article in the collection. It also nicely counterbalances the UNESCO and Leo Weisgerber statements quoted at its outset with one from Palestinian-American Edward Said quoted at its end. True to his mixed ethnic and linguistic heritage, Said affirms that multiple identities and heteroglossia are inextricable grounds of the modern condition. Quotes: How might we conceptualize the identities of persons who command multiple languages and who have acquired them at different developmental points? If such identities may be multilayered, partial, transitory, and context-specific, then surely this has some relevance for the MT/identity equation and, at the very least, 31

should make us question the universalist claims in the 1953 UNESCO Report and from the writings of German linguist Leo Weisgerber above (2). Herein lies the chief conceptual and practical challenge of the contemporary world: how to promote social and economic integration of all ethnolinguistic groups while maintaining true linguistic and cultural pluralism (3). Certainly choice is a key element in determining the fairness and benefits of language policies concerned with language status; if a minority wishes to preserve ifs language, it should, in principle, have that opportunity (8; emphasis original). [B]oth cultural and linguistic continuity and cultural and linguistic adaptation are features of human societies and individuals (8; emphasis original). Perhaps we need to distance ourselves from reifications such as mother tongue (and even language, as Pennycock suggests in his article) as a way to find new space for discourse on language, ethnicity, and identity (8). No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things (8; quoting Said (1994:408)). Pennycock, Alastair. Mother Tongues, governmentality, and protectionism, Revisiting the Mother-Tongue Question in Language Policy, Planning, and Politics. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 154 (2002), 11-28. Rating: 3 Summary: Essentially a deconstructionist enterprise, the article problematizes the notion of mother-tongue, and indeed language in general, insofar as both have served the essentializing agendas of colonial administrations bent on compartmentalizing and controlling ethnic groups. The author explores the concept of disinventing language to place emphasis on the pan-ethnic and fluid character of speech practices. Evaluation: The perspective offered in this piece is intriguing, even if the author offers few solutions to the myriad problems he raises. The article provides a valuable counterbalance to the more traditional perspectives on language preservation and identity. At the very least, it encourages us to rethink our blithe repetitions of the party line in this relatively new enterprise of language documentation and revitalization. Details: The author examines how vernacular education policies in British Malaya and Hong Kong played a role in governmentality, that is the use of discources, 32

educational practices, and language use in enforcing government policy and rule. He also relies heavily on the analysis by Sinfree Makoni of language policy in South Africa, speaking of languages as inventions of colonial governments and missionaries. Quotes: While on the face of things we may be fairly content to assume the existence of languages because we all speak something and it differs to various degrees from the way others speak, on another level the problems with defining linguistically what one is, or where its boundaries are, remain. [L]anguages are predominantly political rather than linguistic categories. (13). As Romaine points out: the very concept of discrete languages is probably a European cultural artifact fostered by processes such as literacy and standardization. Any attempt to count distinct languages will be an artifact of classificatory procedures rather than a reflection of communicative practices (1994: 12) (14). The linguistic project to describe and maintain languages, therefore, is often pursued with an epistemological naivety that on the one hand fails to grasp that the process is as much about production as it is about description, and on the other hand insists on the existence and the necessary primacy of a mother tongue (14). A major concern here, then, is that the view that there are minority, mothertongue languages threatened by other, dominant languages may be a product of the very context from which dominant European languages emerged (14). The very notion of language frequently used to discuss mother tongues, language maintenance, linguistic imperialism, and language education, therefore, may in many cases be a colonial European construct (15). [T]he emphasis on mother-tongue education [by past colonial governments] was interlinked with forms of Orientalism that were aimed at the preservation of cultures as viewed through the exoticizing gaze of the colonial administrator. Viewed in terms of protectionism this attempt to construct and preserve people and their languages clearly connects to more current forms of linguistic and cultural preservation (16). While there are indeed very good arguments for mother-tongue or vernacular literacy, these are also frequently bound up with protectionist (preservationist) discources that form part of the broader field of Orientalism and Aboriginalism (22). [W]e live in a fundamentally inequitable world andlanguage plays a highly significant role in the reproduction of that inequality, as both object and medium of division (24).

33

De Klerk, Gerda. Mother-Tongue Education in South Africa: the Weight of History, Revisiting the Mother-Tongue Question in Language Policy, Planning, and Politics. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 154 (2002), 29-46. Rating: 3 Summary: The prevalent view in current discourse on language endangerment, maintenance, and revitalization holds that language preservation is a human rights issue; this view is inadequate to express the complexity of ways in which language has historically been used to deprive people groups of their rights and pigeon-hole them into ethnic enclaves of repression and exploitation. The case of South Africa exemplifies the difficulties. Evaluation: This paper largely continues along the lines of Pennycocks piece, providing a richer, more in depth single case study to complement his several brief ones. The panoramic perspective on the development of language policy in South Africa proves quite helpful in portraying the extent and nature of government use of language to create and perpetuate ethnic identities. Similar to Pennycock, the paper places large blame on missionaries for constructing ethnolinguistic identities by enforcing standardization on minority linguistic communities. Even though the missionary aim may be positive, the underlying ideology that God wills a linguistic identity for all peoples and, consequently, they have a right to their language and education, etc. in their mother-tongue proves overly reductive and essentializing. Details: Like Pennycock, De Klerk stresses the notion that the interaction between language and identity is far more complex and diffuse that customarily assumed in secondary literature. He argues too for an emergent understanding of such identity as a dynamic force rather than a static label, noting that in many cases multilinguals may have more than one first language and may have a complex identity or set of identities that defy classification and association with a single mother-tongue. Quotes: Much of the current international discourse on global linguistic diversity revolves around concerns about the human rights and cultural and linguistic survival of numerous minority groups in the face of globalization and the expansion of English. From this perspective, mother-tongue promotion and education becomes an important political and linguistic tool to assist in the empowerment of marginalized communities. Just as it is regarded as necessary and desirable to protect endangered species, some scholars argue it is necessary and desirable to protect minority mother tongues and improve their prospects for long-term survival. Within this body of work, on which much of minority language education in the USA, UK, and Europe draws, mother-tongue use is regarded as a basic human right, and its promotion an essential goal for all progressives interested in redressing injustice

34

and inequality associated with the hegemony of high-status majority languages (29). [C]aveats and nuances are often neglected by language activists in favor of simplistic notions of the desirability of mother-tongue education (30). Central to the ideology of apartheid was the construction of ethnolinguistic identities a process started in earlier colonial times by Christian missionaries. Mother tongue was a virtually sacred tool in this construction of ethnicities: God has willed it that there shall be separate nations each with its own language, and that mother-tongue education is accordingly the will of God (E. Greyling quoted in Malherbe 1977: 101) (30-31). Under apartheid, language was perceived and promoted as a core element if culture and ethnicity. Language, culture, and ethnicity became virtually coterminous. The apartheid government used this construct as a short-hand when classifying, segregating, and polarizing South Africans (31). The nine African languages that are currently official languages of the country were largely developed into their present standard forms first through the activities of missionaries and later through the efforts of the Afrikaner Nationalist government that came to power in 1948 (32). These languages were codified by missionaries as an aid in proselytizing the indigenous peoples. Even though the intention of the missionaries was spreading the Christian gospel, the outcome was hat in codifying these languages they made decisions about where to draw boundaries in a continuum of varieties, which aided, with other colonial policies and practices, in the construction of ethnic groups (32). The NP government [Nationalist Party] poured massive resources into the development of Afrikaans so that it could be used up to tertiary levels as a medium of instruction in all content areas. Its use in all, spheres of public life was facilitated and required, and publishing in Afrikaans became a common occurrence. The language that in the early twentieth century was still regarded by many as a slang, by the early 1990s had 180 technical dictionaries (Webb et al. 1992) (32-33). In their own internal functioning and their early language debates, the ANC worked with the concept of language (English) as instrument. English would be the unifying language that would help overcome balkanization and fragmentation, the brutal ethnolinguistic zoning (McLean 1999: 13) of apartheid (35). [D]uring the negotiation process of the early 1990s it became clear the Afrikaner Nationalists would lose power in the new dispensation. Given their attachment to their language, they had to find a way other than force to ensure the survival of Afrikaans. The strategically best way to do this was to support multilingualism and language rights for all (36). 35

This compartmentalized view of language is not entirely removed from the contemporary notions of minority education (for instance English Plus) in the United States, where emphasis is placed on the conservation or revitalization (and I would argue, in many instances, a romanticization) of the minority language and culture alongside acquiring English language skills. Such a compartmentalized view of language runs the risk of conceptualizing a multilingual person as an addition of monolinguals, ignoring (or in the case of the Afrikaner Nationalists, preventing) the possibility that a different type of person with a new fluid identity could come into being as the result of multilingual education (37). [M]uch of the first-world discourse on linguistic diversity sees survival as being about the preservation of things (43). Lewis, M. Paul. 2000. Power and Solidarity as Metrics in Language Survey Data Analysis. In Kindell and Lewis, Assessing Ethnolinguistic Vitality. pp. 79 - 102. Dallas: SIL International. Rating 5 out of 5

Summary Lewis uses this article to promote a hypothesis on language maintenance and shift. He proposes that language communities utilize power and solidarity to reinforce and progress their identity as a group. He incorporates many facets of sociolinguistic study in order to establish this hypothesis. Evaluation Lewis provides his full argument and thought process on how he obtained his understanding. He address each sociolinguistic topic concisely, yet adequately enough to build upon his overall theme without hindering the reading. He does labor the reader with a long winded conclusion and explains his point clearly and succinctly. Details This paper submitted M. Paul Lewis is an attempt to give a better system of identifying linguistic communities and their vitality. Lewis uses multiple facets of sociolinguistic study in order to create his hypothesis. First he reflects on the work by Brown and Gilman (1960) which addresses the use of power and solidarity semantics within conversation. He expands the topic by incorporating Brown and Levinsohns (1987) work on negative and positive face which discuss the use of language to accomplish something with either negative or positive face. He deduced from this that these semantic uses allow surveyors to identify the contributing factors to language maintenance and shift. Next he uses Paulstons (1987) work on language maintenance and shift. Paulston describes how a community slowly gains growing ethnolinguistic identity through time and as socioeconomic features change. He then summarizes Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory in order to give the reader a full foundation for his proposed hypothesis. In the conclusion he brings these all of these factors together. His hypothesis centers on the predominance of individuals with a strong solidarity or strong power orientation 36

and how these individuals will participate in language shift or language maintenance. He believes that through his own research and the culmination of research by these other individuals, linguistic survey should focus on how a community utilizes their language and the reasons for the language promoting ethnolinguistic identity. Quotes The combination of the two semantics provides a great deal of flexibility for speakers to indicate their power and solidarity relationships, and to signal changes in that relationship on the fly as conversation takes place. (Lewis 81)An ethnic movement is ethnicity turned militant, consisting of ethnic discontents who perceive the world asa against them, an adversity drawn along ethnic boundaries (Lewis 84)Ethnicity, face with an oppressive situation and no access to the means (political or economic) of power, may simply hunker down, build strong boundaries, and reinforce its solidarity. (Lewis 86)The point is that as human beings we have both power needs and solidarity needs and that we move between the two, meeting one--such as, our need for independent action--but then as that alienates us from our companions, we swing back to meet our need for acceptance by engaging in solidarity-reinforcing behaviors. (Lewis 88)As useful as it is to know if people like their language and think it is beautiful, we need to keep in mind that languages, like any cultural symbol, are part of a larger semiotic system. (Lewis 96)

VII. Oral Annotation Translation


Woodbury, Anthony C. 2007. On thick translation in language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 4:120-135. London: SOAS. Thick translation consists in documenting textual meaning in such a way as to offer maximum transparency to those who may interpret the records we make in a context highly different from that in which we ourselves work: the philologist 500 years from now (120). The real-time interpretation of the Cupik passages introduced numerous interpolations and omissions/simplifications into the passages studied. These were discovered by going back over the material in discussion and providing detailed parsing and a parsed rendition of the text. The glosses provided during live interpretation also tended to ignore the syntactic information provided by inflectional endings, information contained in the parsing. A lexical inconsistency in Woodburys field notes was cleared up by going back and listening to the tape made of the discussion session with two native informants: having those sessions recorded allowed the documenter to understand and reconstruct why one translation choice was made instead of another. Thick translation involves at least the following curatable artefacts: 37

Audio recordings of real-time free translations Word-by-word and sentence by sentence translations by an original-language speaker (written by the speaker or represented in field notes or on tape) Linguists morphosyntactic parses, with invariant glosses for minimal elements Linguists compositional renditions of parses Drafts of (ever-more) refined literary translations by source-language speaker, target-language speaker, or a collaborations [sic] of both Formal poetic analyses of the original that were factored into translations Alternative versions of the same text Literary exegeses, discussion, footnotes, hypertext (written, or in notes or tapes of interactions leading to any of the above) It follows, then, that all of them should be made, handled, and used with care (134).

VIII. Sustainable Recordings


Simons, Gary F. 2006. Ensuring that digital data last: The priority of archival form over working form and presentation form. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2006-003. The irony of modern writing technology is that the most technologically advanced forms of writing (digital) are the least permanent. The language documenter must take pains to ensure that his recordings are lasting by putting them in an enduring file format and storing them in archives that will migrate them to newer forms of storage as it becomes available. Current digital storage media are short lived (from 5 to 30 years) and, worse still, the machines needed to read them become obsolete before the media themselves expire. Use of proprietary software exacerbates the problem as software makers change their formats and features with each iteration of a product. The phenomenon of digital data loss has become so prevalent that many are beginning to warn of an impending digital dark age (3). We must exercise care; otherwise, our digital data records are even more endangered than the languages we are seeking to document. (3). File formats can be divided into three classes depending on their function; the first two are inappropriate for archiving purposes. 1) Working form (form in which they are created and edited, like Microsoft Word); 2) Presentation Form (form in which they are presented to public, like dynamic web pages); 3) Archival form (form in which they are stored for 38

access long into the future). A good archival file format should be: lossless (i.e. it should not sacrifice information content for compression or space savings); 2) open (i.e. the format should be openly documented and available to public, not the proprietary secret of a company or individual); 3) transparent (i.e. the manner in which the information is encoded should be easy to understand and interpret, not requiring a decipherment or decoding, so that individuals far removed in time and space from the creator(s) can use it); 4) supported by many software suppliers. Often open source projects provide these last two criteria. With these definitions, we can define three levels of practice in archiving data: unacceptable, acceptable, and best. The best practice is to use XML descriptive markup for archiving digital language data. A key to XMLs being an enduring, non-ephemeral format is the fact that it is founded upon ASCII, using Unicode as its default character set. Because it uses Unicode, XML can encode information in any written language, and because it supports user-defined descriptive tags, XML can transparently encode the structure of information, not just the stream of characters (12). Concludes by presenting three proposals for how linguistics can spread and grow the practice of responsible archiving of language data: 1) to make it part of the tenure review process; 2) to make it required for the purposes of receiving grants; 3) to forge strong alliances between linguistics and the archiving profession.

Bird, Steven and Gary F. Simons. 2003. Seven dimensions of portability for language documentation and description. Language 79:557-582. Digital data resources are difficult to reuse and less portable than the printed resources they were designed to replace. In the very generation when the rate of language death is at its peak, we have chosen to use moribund technologies, and to create endangered data (2). If documentation is to transcend time, it must be reusable across different platforms, scholarly communities, and purposes. This is what the paper addresses as portability. Begins with survey of existing software and hardware tools for language documentation. Notes that one challenge in archiving is that data preservation is not as attractive to sponsors as data creation (5). This snapshot of the digital data of language documentation reveals an embarrassing level of digital detritus, that is, data stored in formats that have become obsolete or are not portable. Article then considers seven problem areas for portability: 1) Content, involving three key concepts of coverage, accountability and terminology, the second of these concerning the need to be able to verify conclusions by checking against the language documentation on which such conclusions are based; 2) Format, involving four key concepts of openness, encoding, markup of structure, and rendering of information in human-readable displays; [NB: The purpose of 39

markup is to support format conversion, database storage, and query (7). In markup systems, there are two kinds of markup: presentational, which concerns how the data will look for human readers (e.g. font, color, etc.), and descriptive, which consists of tags to identify the pieces of information as to their function so as to enable a computer to read and manipulate the information.] 3) Discovery, involving discovering the existence of a resource and then judging its relevance. 4) Access, involving three key concepts of scope of access granted, process by which access is granted, and ease with which access is obtained. 5) Citation, involving four key concepts of bibliography, persistence of electronic resource identifiers, immutability of materials, granularity of what may be cited; on the first, the article notes that citation standards are usually lower for citations of digital resources than for conventional publications. Also, citing URLs is dangerous inasmuch as URLs are not persistent and often break. Granularity refers to the ability to cite portions of the digitized material, its internal components. 6) Preservation, involving three key concepts of longevity, safety from catastrophic loss, and ongoing migration of resources to current physical and digital media. 7) Rights, involving the four key concepts of terms of use, maximizing public benefit, protecting sensitivity in resource, finding the proper balance between public benefits and protecting sensitivities. In discussing sensitivity, notes that there is a perceived risk of commercial exploitation of language documentation in much the same way as there has been with indigenous music. Also, researchers may use data to build their career but not make it available to the community from which it is drawn. Many of these issues are exacerbated for little studied languages. In discussing sensitivity, the article notes the difference between documentation and description in terms of balancing sensitivities: whereas the researcher merely collects the documentation and, thus, may be subject to the sensitivities of the language group in its dissemination, he produces the description, such that only his own sensitivities need prevail. Some resources, though, like grammars and lexicons, combine documentation and description. In discussing best practices, the article first examines the motivations behind judgments so as to build consensus on what constitutes the grounds for recommendations. NB: everyone applying for a grant for language documentation must cite this paper and indicate familiarity with its concepts.

40

Simons, Gary F. and Steven Bird. Toward a global infrastructure for the sustainability of language resources. Proceedings of the 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 2022 November 2008, Cebu City, Philippines Begins by defining the term language resource as something that is the product of the three Ds [sic] (2): language documentation, language description, and language development. The problem of sustainability of these resources arises as a result of the entropy that degrades digital data, the innovation that renders new technologies obsolete at alarming rates, and the proliferation of all types of information that makes finding relevant language resources harder. Proposes six necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of language resources in order to promote sustainability; resources must be: extant discoverable: the key to this is descriptive metadata available: rights must be established and clearly stated interpretable: all details of content need to be provided, such as contexts, methodologies, terminologies, abbreviations, encodings, etc. portable relevant: especially to the language community itself There are four key players involved in achieving the sustainability of language resources: 1) creators, 2) archives, 3) aggregators (institutions that gather resources from multiple archives and make them interoperate), 4) users. Aggregators are necessary because there are so many different institutions curating archives of resources that the individual user cannot know about all the various archives to look in. The article ends by noting the spread of the 1983 UN definition of sustainable development to the field of business where it was popularized as the triple bottom line, People, Planet, Profit. These are the so-called three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social dimensions (12).

Chang, Debbie. 2010. TAPS: Checklist for Responsible Archiving of Digital Language Resources. Dallas, TX:GIAL MA thesis Discusses the endangerment crisis and current archiving locations, institutions, and practices toward developing a checklist for responsible archiving of digital language resources, TAPS, which has four components: Target, Access, Preservation, and Sustainability.

41

UNESCO. 2003. Guidelines for the preservation of digital heritage. Information Society Division, UNESCO. Digital heritage: what it is, why it should be preserved

IX. Discover Ways of Speaking


Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:165191. Section 4.2 How do we determine the number and types of communicative events in a language so as to document them? Conventional text collections suffer from the monotony of including only narratives and procedural texts. This does not provide an adequate sampling of the variety of linguistic practices in a given speech community. We need to develop tools to collect a wide array of communicative events, especially if spontaneous recording of certain of them proves unfeasible. Yet considerable difficulty attends the definition of the term genre or texttype crosslinguistically. We cannot establish a universally applicable grid of texttypes for language documentation. There are two ways to approach this problem of a systematics for communicative events (19): 1) anthropological, which seeks to discover the native categories of speech event and document those; 2) linguistic, which seeks to discover differences in linguistic structures as reflective of different communicative events. From the various research traditions, we may draw the category of spontaneity as the most general, yet sufficiently operational, to serve as a parameter for a comprehensive yet flexible categorizational scheme (21). Spontaneity can be seen as a spectrum running from planned to unplanned along which particular speech events may be placed. There are five major types to be distinguished on this continuum: spontaneous (uncontrolled), directives (i.e. utterances integrated into sequences of actions), conversations, monologues, and ritual speech events. This parameter assumes that spontaneity correlates with aspects of linguistic structure, specifically that complexity of linguistic structuring increase with the degree of planning permitted in a speech event. Since more planned speech events usually are acquired later in the language learning process and ability in these types is distributed unevenly over a speech community, with some individuals better at storytelling or explaining things than others, one must take care in selecting the person(s) who will contribute each type of speech event to the documentation to ensure that they are capable and knowledgeable in that area. The most common type in the list is the conversational, and so a corpus should include more conversational exchanges than anything else if frequency in everyday life is taken into account. Also, the conversational and monological types have 42

more subtypes than the other categories. Due to this heterogeneity of the five major types of speech events, it is difficult to determine the kinds and number of communicative event to be included in a language documentation. The parameter of spontaneity serves as a guideline to assist the researcher(s) in assessing possible gaps in the data collected up to a certain point in the research. The documentation should also include other media if they are used in the communitys linguistic practices, such as writing or signing. That is, the parameter of spontaneity is to be complemented by a second parameter, i.e. the parameter of modality. The parameter of modality, however, is not continuous like spontaneity, but categorical. No continuum exists between speaking and writing: they are separate actions controlled by separate parts of the brain. There is also, though, a need for considerable repetition of various types of speech events in a documentation, so as to be able to determine what is regular and what is ad hoc in a given type of communicative event.

Dooley, Robert A. and Stephen H. Levinsohn. 2001. Analyzing discourse: A manual of basic concepts. Chapter 2, pp. 7-10. Dallas: SIL International. Defines genre as a type of text characterized by a certain limited range of content and a distinctive overall structure or formal constraints of one kind or another. Each text type has a particular social or cultural purpose around which clusters a characteristic combination of linguistic or textual properties. Genre is culturespecific and each culture has genres which are distinctive to it. Longacre (1996) distinguishes four features which are used with plus or minus values to categorize genres. Two of the most basic of these features which are primary are contingent temporal succession (seeing some or most events as contingent on previous events or doings) and agent orientation (focusing on events or doings which are controlled by an agent. The four categories of genre resulting from these features are 1) narrative (+ CTS, +AO); 2) procedural (+CTS, -AO); 3) behavioral (-CTS, +AO); 4) expository (-CTS, -AO). Procedural discourse is AO because the focus is on what is done and how, not who does it. Behavioral discourse includes exhortations, eulogies, political speeches); expository discourse includes budgets, scientific articles, etc. The two additional features identified by Longacre are projection (whether a situation or action is contemplated, enjoined, anticipated, but not realized) and tension (whether the discourse reflects a struggle or polarization of some sort (9; pg 4 of pdf)). More specific genre designations require other textual properties to specify: e.g. drama is broadly narrative but is written as dialogue and for live presentation. Discourses can be embedded in other discourses, and this embedding complicates the classification of texts. Issues of textual classification often rest on the speakers intent and the reasons the text was produced. Often a speaker will have individual goals in addition to those culturally attached to the 43

particular discourse: this combination of all the purposes behind a text is the communicative intent. Communicative intent is diverse and generally layered (10; pg 5 of pdf). The question of intent is not, at bottom, a purely linguistic one, although it can be reflected linguistically (10; pg 5 of pdf). A text type, then, is a culturally-typical type of action which is performed by linguistic means. Communicative intent has to do with the reasons that lie behind the linguistic action (10; pg 5 of pdf).

Gossen, Gary H. 1974. To speak with a heated heart: Chanula canons of style and good performance. In Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, edited by Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, pp. 389-413. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Chamula (Tzotzil) use heat as a metaphor to evaluate and discuss all areas of their social life, from linguistic discourse to ritual action to the life and agricultural cycles. The metaphor derives from their belief in Our Father Sun (389) who creates and maintains the cosmos. This metaphor provides the metalanguage the Chamula use to create a folk taxonomy of communicative events and to evaluate both moral and esthetic good. Since the sun provides heat and moves in cycles that demarcate time, the metaphor emphasizes heat and cyclicity. In the Chamula folk taxonomy, increased formalism, structure, redundancy are indicative of speaking with a heated heart (398) which is seen as doing the sun gods will and thus as part of ethical social behavior. More ritual genres require greater heat of performance (399), which surfaces as greater metaphorical stacking and greater density of the semantic load (399). Language that is idiosyncratic and nonredundant is viewed as cold, associated with the earth, moon, and femininity, not valued as hot. [Cf. synonymous parallelism in Biblical Hebrew poetry, Ciceronian periodic style, elaborate balanced constructions of Attic oratory: cross-linguistically lavish verbosity, high degrees of parallelism and balanced structure constitute evidence of elaborated, weighty, dignified speech. Indeed, the true periodic style in Latin oratory usually had a cyclical, inclusio effect.] Notice that speech that contains heat, that of drunken, emotional, and angry speakers, does not control or restrain this heat and, thus, is said to be speech for bad people (402). Sherzer, Joel. 1983. Kuna ways of speaking: An ethnographic perspective. University of Texas: Austin. Sections on "Language and speech in cross-cultural perspective" and "The ethnography of speaking," pp. 8-14. Introduces types of communicative events among Kuna and how he used ethnography of communication in his book.

44

CABLITZ, GABRIELE H. 2011. Documenting cultural knowledge in dictionaries of endangered languages. International Journal of Lexicography. 24(4). 446-62. Rating: 3 Summary: This article is focused on the inclusion of culture in a dictionary of an endangered language. He argues that all data should be organized in ways that represent emic categories, and that the line between dictionary and encyclopedia is not clear cut when you are working in an under-documented languages. He emphasizes the importance of encoding cultural-semantic knowledge into the dictionary that may not be available to later generations, and has the community draw lexical connection webs that include traditional uses of all parts of plants, etc. Evaluation: His emphasis is critical to understanding one aspect of the role of culture in language documentation, but his focus is very narrow: focused solely on lexicography, and the article gets bogged down in the particulars of the language used as the example, and the processes of lexicography. The why of it is only briefly discussed in the introduction, and rehashed in the conclusion. The article does highlight the connection between culture and language, however, and a particular way in which the documenter can accommodate that. Quotes: For members of the speech community whose language is in danger of disappearing it is even more imperative to carefully document the various cultural connotations which are connected with a lexeme because it serves as an important document of their social and cultural history and as a repertoire of cultural knowledge which is so intricately linked with their language. Pg. 15

HILL, JANE H. 2006. The ethnography of language and language documentation. In Essentials of language documentation ed. by Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Ulrike Mosel, 184-211. New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Rating: 2 Summary: The focus of this article is more along the lines of why it is important for linguists to understand culture. They need to understand how types of speech are locally organized and learn to assume that every difference is meaningful, as opposed to natural. They also need to understand how they affect cultures by introducing a role that frequently did not exist before in the communitythat of adult second 45

language learner. This can lead to the development of a new community of practice, which in turn gives rise to new linguistic innovationwhich they need to be aware is the effect of their presence, not a normal feature of the language. They also have to be aware of their data falling victim to the tendency to develop short cuts within communities of practice. The article also discusses the language ideologies of marginalized communities, and how the linguist needs to be aware of its cultural implications when working with those groups. Evaluation: This article doesnt really deal directly with the topic I was trying to investigate, its more tangentially related. It reinforces the need for linguists to include anthropology and cultural awareness in their training, but deals more with how the field linguist will find themselves interacting with culture as they try to document a language. Its not a bad article though, and highlights several things that attention needs to be brought to. Quotes: Documentary linguists needto be ethnographers, because they venture into communities that may have very different forms of language use from those of the communities in which they were socialized as human beings or trained as scholars.

X. Planning a Documentary Corpus


Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:165191. Section 3.2. The content of a language documentation is determined by the purpose of language documentation: to document the linguistic practices and competencies of a speech community. The presentational format is determined by the need to make the data assembled amenable to a variety of further uses and analyses. Language documentation seeks to document communicative events, defined as the sound event situated in location, posture, gestures, artifacts, etc. This emphasis differentiates language documentation from traditional text collections that contain primarily narrative and procedural texts and only document verbal behavior. Video is ideal to capture the holistic perspective of communicative events in their natural environments. Metalinguistic knowledge of the speech community should also be capture via commentary on other recorded communicative events, lists and folk taxonomies of communicative events, and language plays. Some phenomena, though, like paradigms, folk taxonomies of plants and animals, etc. generally never naturally arise in everyday discourse and will have to be elicited from native experts. The elicitation should be as natural as possible, but also considered a special, artificial communicative event and documented as such. These kinds of 46

data are called lists in documentation and are related to the analytical format known as an ethno-thesaurus. There is a third section of documentation called analytic matters that consists of data and language discussion independent of particular communicative events or list-like phenomena. The presentational format of the documentation usually contains three elements: the raw data in various forms including transcriptions and video/audio recordings, a translation (literal, interlinear, and free), and a commentary with additional information as to recording circumstances. Everything about the communicative event and its recording, transcribing, translating, and commentary should be recorded. The commentary should also include general introductory remarks as to the nature of the speech community, the language and its genetic affiliation, typology, etc., fieldwork methods used, and the contents/scope of the documentation. Two rules apply to the presentational format: 1) no primary data are excluded just because they dont fit in to a given analytical frame or research goal; 2) the presentation is organized around the documents, not an analytical framework. Language documentation is data-driven. Analytical information will be included, but it will be interspersed throughout the introductory remarks to the various parts of the documentation. This data-driven format ensures that the documentation is of potential benefit to the broadest range of interested parties and further uses. Ideally, the person in charge of a documentation speaks the language fluently, has lived in the community for some considerable time, and knows the cultural and linguistic practices well. This ideal compiler should also be familiar with a wide array of approaches to language and linguistic data. Because these qualities are rarely met in a single individual, effective language documentation requires an interdisciplinary team and close cooperation from the speech community.

Simons, Gary F. 2008. The rise of documentary linguistics and a new kind of corpus. Presented at 5th National Natural Language Research Symposium, De La Salle University, Manila, 25 Nov 2008. Overview of rise of language documentation and endangerment crisis. A wellformed BOLD corpus contains: 1) document introducing the language, people, project, coverage, methods; 2) table of contents; 3) set of fully commented items. Fully commented item consists of: 1) recording; 2) informed consent; 3) situational metadata; 4) oral transcription; 5) oral translation. The most widely used tool for audio transcription is Transcriber (http://trans.sourceforge.net/); for video transcription, ELAN (ELAN Language Archiving Technology; http://www.latmpi.eu/tools/elan/). The breadth of the corpus comprises: 1) communicative events; 2) elicited lists; 3) analytical discussions (from Himmelmann). The last should be lead by a researcher and conducted in a LWC so as not to require transcription or translation. Sampling communicative events should begin with a grid classifying events on a scale from planned to unplanned. The speech communitys insiders (emic) grid should also be elicited for further documentation. The choice of 47

speakers should also reflect a cross section of age, gender, social stratum, education level, regional variety. The size of the corpus depends on the purpose: for historical reconstruction, 100s to 1000s of lexical items are required; for basic descriptive grammar, 100,000+ words of running text; for good lexicography, millions of words of running text. The project is not complete until it is archived for long term preservation and access.

FRANCHETTO, BRUNA. 2006. Ethnography in language documentation. In Essentials of language documentation ed. by Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Ulrike Mosel, 184-211. New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Rating: 5 Summary: This article deals directly with the importance of documenting culture alongside language, and how to gather data that will make (almost) everyone happy, at least in the realm of ethnography and linguistics. The author outlines the connections between the fields of ethnography and linguistics, and gives a list of important pieces of data to include from an ethnographic standpoint. An interdisciplinary team that includes a linguist and an ethnographer is presented as the ideal (because ethnographers know how to ask the right questions. She also argues for the exploration of thematic domains (such as kinship) in addition to semantic domains. The article also highlights the importance of understanding and documenting the way people talk about language. Evaluation: The article does well with explaining why its necessary and beneficial to document culture as well as language. It gets a little thick in the middle, but the information for the most partstays relevant. It deals less with directly documenting cultural events, however, and more with trying to elicit explanations and the terminology of culture from consultants. Quotes: Ethnographic information is a crucial component of any language documentation. If the wider goal is not simply to collect texts and a lexical database, but also to present and preserve the cultural heritage of the speech community, then ethnographical information must be linked to the linguistic data and its annotation and analysis. Pg. 183 In addition, visual documentation to date very often involves amateurish products of dubious quality and professionalism. Pg. 191 (This makes me sad. ) 48

XI. Managing all the Data


Simons, Gary. 2009. A plan for managing the data from a language documentation project. ms. Presents an Excel spreadsheet with a grid for managing the metadata of your documentary corpora. Discusses how each item should have a unique ID beginning with a letter code to correspond to Himmelmanns parts of the documentary corpus: E for communicative event; L for elicited lists; T for analytical discussion topics, followed by a three-digit number with leading zeroes so everything sorts into numerical order when the numbers reach the tens and hundreds. The event and list words fields record the contribution of the item to the total word count/size of the corpus. Multiply the duration of the recording by a typical speaking speed in words per minute to obtain these values. The files tab correlates these data with the file names and technical metadata of the recordings. Discusses are format for naming files that is consistent with that of the item IDs, comprising the item ID, a type code that contains three letters corresponding to the documentation task, like ori for original recording or wtl for written translation, and a category for other information with the file extension. Files from SD cards should be renamed according to the recommended schema as soon as possible after recording and the recordist should speak the metadata into the recording at the beginning of each session to help keep track of things. The contributor sheet indexes the people involved in the documentation. Each person is identified by a Short Name ID. Primarily those whose voices appear on recordings should be included here in detail. This is also where you keep track of informed consent. The categories tab records the lists used on other tabs. Because Excel is a proprietary software format, the information should be saved as PDF/HTML and TXT/CSV formats for archiving.

XII. Planning a Documentary Project


Lewis, M. Paul and Gary F. Simons. 2010. Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishmans GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 2. Romania: Publishing House of the Romanian Academy Introduces an evaluative scale for assessing language vitality consisting of 13 levels in an effort to align the separate scales of UNESCO, Ethnologue, and Fishmans 8level Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS). The new scale is the Expanded GIDS or EGIDS. GIDS focuses on intergenerational transmission of language as the key to its maintenance (cf. Krauss use of it in the definition of 49

moribund). The societal norms of a speech community dictate the domains in which language is used; as these norms erode, language shift occurs spurring the problem of endangerment. This, in turn, might motivate parents to determine that it is no longer worthwhile to pass the language onto children because it is less valuable for life than another language. The GIDS scale runs from 1 being the most vital to 8 being the most endangered with only the oldest generation still using the language. According to Fishman, most minoritized languages are at stage 6: used orally and learned by children as first language. The GIDS has several shortcomings. First, its descriptions are static and not directional: languages moving up the scale require different interventions from those moving down. Second, the scale does not capture enough levels to properly describe the variety of what we see in all its detail; extra classification steps are needed. Third, GIDS places emphasis on intergenerational transmission as the most important factor in vitality, but from level 5 up, the main factor seems to be institutional development, not individuals and homes. Fourth, GIDS is least elaborated at the lowest end of the scale where the most endangerment is. The UNESCO framework proposed in 2003 has 6 categories: safe, vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered, extinct. This model has the reverse of the problem with GIDS: while it is sufficiently elaborated at the lowest end of the spectrum, the highest end has only the catch-all safe which would correspond to GIDS levels 6 through 1. Ethnologues five level scale focuses most on the numbers of first-language speakers. The levels are: living, second language only, nearly extinct, dormant, extinct. Like UNESCO, this framework also does not distinguish between the upper end of the spectrum. Ethnologues category of dormant, including languages no longer used or learned but identified with as heritage languages by ethnic communities, was created in large part due to the objects of members of these communities who disliked the terminology of extinction. So too came the phrase reawakening sleeping languages (109). The EGIDS level can be established by answering five evaluative questions; the first (What is the current identity function of the language? Historical, heritage, home, vehicular) to distinguish the lowest two levels; the second (What is the level of official use? International, national, regional, not official) to distinguish the four levels at the top of the scale; the remaining three for the other levels (Are all parents transmitting the language to their children? Yes, no; What is the literacy status? Institutional, incipient, none; What is the youngest generation of proficient speakers? Great grandparents, grandparents, parents, children). There is also a specialized subset of EGIDS for use when a language is being revitalized; the upward movement of the language warrants a different set of labels and level descriptions.

Keating, Brad. 2007. Equipment selection. ms.

50

Argues that, with the rise of documentary linguistics, professionalism rests equally in the recordings, the metadata, and the analyses. Since thousands of dollars have been spent on education and preparation prior to going into the field, why scrimp overly on the quality of the equipment; after all, almost the entire purpose of the project rests on the quality of the recordings produced. Provides a detailed list of recommended field equipment.

Reiman, Will. 2008. Most basic equipment list and Improved most basic equipment list. ms. Two PDF slides with photos and descriptions of recommended audio equipment for language documentation.

XIII. Ethical Responsibilities and Informed Consent


Beam de Azcona, Rosemary G. n.d. The internet, linguistic consultants, and informed consent. EMELD School of Best Practice. Begins with a summary of the authors general practice of asking consultants whether they wished to remain anonymous in published and archived data and whether they wanted certain bits of data censored or suppressed for various reasons. Relates an example of a consultant who wanted discussions about nicknames censored since the parties whose derogatory nicknames were discussed were often unaware of the nicknames. Notes that once she heard a linguist ask how to explain informed consent for posting data on the internet when the native community members have no concept of what the internet is; the author states she is writing the article for this very purpose. Suggests saving to your computer in advance webpages relating to what a linguists site might look like and the name of the town and/or language of the consultants with whom you will work, such that you can show the pages even while offline in areas without internet access. There are two main considerations in assessing how to impose access restrictions on data. First is whether the consultant wishes to remain anonymous. Second is whether the consultant wants certain data to be restricted from certain groups of people, usually due to its sensitive nature, as with the nickname example. There are three questions to be asked in order to determine whether and how to restrict access: 1) Do you want to be anonymous? 2) Can this content be made public? 3) If access is restricted, who can see/hear the content? (i.e. who cant have access?) The researcher(s) should always talk with consultants about anonymity and access issues and renew the discussion every year or so to make sure nothing has changed in the consultants view. If you cannot track down the interested parties to get

51

informed consent after the fact, but you suspect the material may be sensitive, it is best to restrict in the same way as you do other, similar material.

Newman, Paul. 2007. Copyright Essentials for Linguists. Language Documentation and Conservation, 1(1):28-43. Uses Q&A format to address copyright issues linguists confront as users and creators of scholarly work. There are three reasons that copyright issues are coming more to the fore in scholarship: 1) copyright protection in the US now lasts longer than before: 70 to 120 years as opposed to just 28 years formerly; 2) publishing academic journals has turned out to be enormously profitable; 3) the internet poses new threats to traditional publishing while offering new opportunities for effective scholarly communication. If scholars do not pay proper attention to copyright, they may cede rights they need not lose, such as the ability to post their own papers to their own websites or distribute them to students in their own classes. Some notes from the Q&A: copyright is automatic; you do not have to formally pay and register your copyright, though doing so entitles you to certain legal rights like the ability to sue and recover monetary damages for breach of copyright. Facts and data, as from field notes, are not copyrightable. No one owns copyright to folktales due to lack of identifiable authorship. If, while youre collecting field data, the consultants tell you it is community property, you may thereby acquire contractual or ethical obligations, but this would fall outside of copyright law. As far as oral works are concerned, copyright law requires that the work be reduced to tangible form (40; p. 13 of pdf). Thus, as soon as you record a poets oral rendition of his oral poem, it has been reduced to tangible form and now falls under copyright law. But, of course, this would be the copyright law of the country in which the poet lived. As for photos taken in the field, copyright law generally holds that the photographer is the author of photos and holds their copyright. Whether you need permission from the people in the photos in order to publish them boils down to ethical, personal, professional, and cultural concerns. In terms of documenting languages and cultural practices, copyright law does not come into play, since you cannot copyright facts and data or real-world phenomena.

Lieberman, Mark. 2000. Legal, Ethical, and Policy Issues Concerning the Recording and Publication of Primary Language Materials. Proceedings of the Workshop Web-Based Language Documentation and Description, 12-15 December 2000, Philadelphia, USA. Conference proceeding detailing specifics of copyright law and its impact on language documentation and archiving and sharing practices. Discusses what laws

52

apply, which copyright laws need to be followed when working internationally, and the implications for informed consent, as well as ethical considerations.

Thieberger, Nicholas and Simon Musgrave. 2007. Language documentation and ethical issues. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 4: 26-37. London: SOAS. Presents and discusses the numerous and challenging issues arising with the advent of documentary linguistics, ever-developing technology, and archiving of data in relation to ethics and informed consent. Provides little in the way of answers, but sparks thought and discussion in an area vital to language documentation.

XIV. Community Participation


Dwyer, Arienne M. 2006. Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis. Section 3.4, "Community: Cooperative work between consultants and researchers," pp. 54-56. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, and Ulrike Mosel, editors. Essentials of Language Documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. The older model of the field linguist followed the lone ranger model (54): a sole researcher going in, getting the data, leaving promptly, and publishing. This model is both grossly inefficient in terms of time, travel, and money, and it tends to create ill will with the native communities because the researcher does not have the time to cultivate and nurture intimate relationships, train native consultants, or become truly proficient in the language or culture. The new cooperative model proves enormously more efficient in training and using native consultants to aid with the data collection and annotation and tends to create much better relationships. It also helps to eliminate some of the observer paradox inasmuch as the people themselves can eventually act as observers. However, it is harder to coordinate logistically and demands more attention to personnel management and interpersonal communication. The linguist should approach a community with the mindset I am here to learn; can you teach me? (55)

Dwyer, Arienne M. 2006. Ethics and Practicalities of Cooperative Fieldwork and Analysis. In Gippert, Himmelman and Mosel, Essentials of Language Documentation. pp. 31 - 66. New York: Mouton de Gruyer. 53

Rating

4 out of 5

Summary Dwyer discusses the ethical and practicality issues facing language documentation. Her work centers around the interactions between the outsiderresearcher and the linguistic community being documented. She intentionally outlines criteria and problems researchers face while doing fieldwork and provides best-practices as guidelines. She summarized the chapter stating, it is the attentiveness of ethical issues which determines a projects success (Dwyer 60). Evaluation I think Dwyer addresses the issue of ethical and legal responsibility very well. She makes it clear that we may not be legally bound to a community, but ethically need to respect that relation and make allowances in response. I do think that the chapter is rather extensive but this is not unwarranted. I found the most useful information in Sections 3 & 4 when she discusses the practicalities of language documentation. Details Dwyer gives a very well thought out set of criteria for choosing a language community in which a researcher should work. Quotes Accommodate community input into your research goals, or, better yet, plan the research collaboratively with the indigenous community. (Dwyer 38) Researchers are ethically obligated to inform data producers of all possible uses of the data so as to implement the do no harm principle above. (Dwyer 39, emphasis added)Researchers must avoid being buried with their unpublished field notes and recordings. Within bounds of informed consent, those work with endangeredlanguage communities have an obligation to appropriately store and publish dad analysis. Even in imperfect form, ordered, shared data is far more useful than no data;disseminating or at least properly archiving collected data is far more respectful to a speaker community than piling it in the back of the closet. (Dwyer 40)Though such informed consent contracts are a positive development, universities need to establish a generic and more flexible consent template for linguistic and social science research in non-clinical settings under different cultural circumstances. (Dwyer 43)When a researcher lacks a previous working or personal relationship with a specific community of speakers, he or she must identify one, establish contact, and build a cooperative working relationship to that community. (Dwyer 50) Rice, Keren. 2006. Ethical issues in linguistic fieldwork: an overview. Journal of Academic Ethics 4:123-55. Read pp. 19-23. Discusses responsibilities of the linguist to the community independent of codes of ethics. Also seeks to avoid discussion and dealings with local political factions; the author recommends avoiding them altogether to the extent that such is possible. It is important to get the permission of the community before going to conduct research among them both because out research affects them and because 54

they can help on the practical level sort out some of the difficulties we face in beginning our fieldwork. Ways a linguist impacts the local community include: bringing money in and paying for work; bringing new equipment in and leaving some behind. Getting permission creates cooperation from the start which, in turn, enables the empowerment model (11ff.). Some communities also require that a researcher return something to the community in some way. This can be a physical gift of some kind or a service in an area of our expertise, such as orthography development, literacy training, preparing dictionaries, etc. It is important to ensure that the scope of the project matches the allotted time frame well in order to be achieved. Ethical behavior towards communities thus involves obtaining their permission from the relevant body(-ies) within the community, ensuring they understand the research, seeking guidance from them as to pay and/or compensation for participation, and working out issues of ownership of material.

Rice, Keren. 2008. The linguists responsibilities to the community of speakers: community-based research. Unpublished ms. pp. 208-9 A list of questions about who will be involved and who will see results of a project. Good for considering possible concerns of language community.

Rice, Keren. 2011. Documentary Linguistics and Community Relations. Language Documentation and Conservation 5: 187-207.

Headland, Thomas and Janet Headland. 2007. Informed consent documentation. In Agta Demographic Database: Chronicle of a Hunter-Gatherer Community in Transition SIL Language and Culture Documentation and Description 2007-002. Contains letter from Agta community affirming their support for and agreement to participate in the research with signatures and thumb prints for a large number of the individuals in the community. Also contains a letter from UND affirming that the proposed research does not fall under the human subjects guidelines since it is simply a publishing online of census data with names and photographs. There is likewise a description of the project and protocol, the history of the research, and a description of the activity and timing of the project.

Wilkins, David. Linguistic Research Under Aboriginal Control: A Personal Account of Fieldwork in Central Australia, Australian Journal of Linguistics 12 (1992), 171-200. 55

Rating: 5 Summary: Presents a case study highlighting complexities of conducting academic research under the control and auspices of an Aboriginal community organization. The author was a linguist in the full-time employ of the Yipirinya School Council from 1982 to 1985, during which time he worked on the Mparntwe Arrernte language while under the complete control of the Council. All decisions regarding the nature and methods of the research, subjects, events, even publications had to be made by the Council. The author even had to seek permission for publications stemming from the data after his term with the Council had expired. His experiences were largely positive and proved very educational, filling in the gaps left in his formal, academic training. Evaluation: Similar to, though more thorough than, Rice, Keren. 2006. Ethical issues in linguistic fieldwork: an overview. Journal of Academic Ethics 4:123-55, the paper provides an excellent view into culturally sensitive, community-focused linguistic research. The focus of the author is not language documentation per se, though he did engage in various lines of research and endeavor that straddle the border between traditional descriptive linguistics and language documentation. The paper is especially instructive insofar as it presents the authors journey of personal discovery, not knowing at all what he was getting into at the outset. It also nicely illustrates the tensions the result between commitments to the native community and to the academic world. Details: Over the course of his stint as linguist for the Yipirinya School Council, Wilkins had to focus a great deal more of his energy and time on areas of pedagogy, pedagogical material development, literacy education, consultant training, and creation of research policies than he had ever before anticipated. Initially, he found his linguistic training per se both sorely inadequate and relatively extraneous to the tasks at hand. He also found that for the first six months or more, the community was keener on his acquiring a thorough, active command of the Arrernte language and serving their practical needs than on his linguistic research. He was made to serve as an interpreter for a stint as well, which helped a great deal in shoring up his knowledge of and comfort with the language. Tension developed between Wilkins and his academic advisors over the length of time that passed without his having hit upon a specific topic for his Ph.D. dissertation (largely as a result of the fact that he did not have the time to devote to developing research interests owing to his full schedule of community involvement), and Wilkins even lost his scholarship for Ph.D. research for a time. As a part of his agreement with the School Council, they were supposed to review and vet all potential publication materials for inaccuracies or information they did want disclosed. In practice, this policy was impracticable, since they did not possess the ability to understand the technical or academic points, nor did they have the time to properly devote to reviewing each possible publication. Even once Wilkins was no longer in their employ but was still expected to present materials for their pre-publication approval, the Council was 56

unable to exercise this control and gave him the freedom to bypass that particular policy. Quotes: I believe that our obligations can be subsumed under four major areas: Recognizing the political and social contest for our research and, where necessary, taking the part of the language we study and its speakers. Recognizing the rights of speakers if politically subordinate languages over those languages, and paying attention to their expressed wishes for the public presentation of facts about their languages. Contributing to the training of linguists who are speakers of subordinate languages, at every level from empirical to theoretical. Publishing descriptions and analyses of the languages we work on that are of the highest possible quality, and making those publications available to speakers of the language (179). From my point of view as an academic linguist, the most significant feature of this agreement is that it gives the Council control over my research. My research work, both inside and outside the field situation, continues only with the consent of the Council and may be terminated by them if they have good reason. They must approve all research methods before they are employed and they must receive and approve all works centrally based on my field research that are intended for publication. Whenever possible, copyright of publications is to rest both with myself and the Council. Moreover, the Council is acknowledged as the rightful owner of all tapes and raw field notes which I make when I am in the field; they must be supplied with all originals, or copies, of these materials, and the copies, or originals, that I retain are on permanent loan to me, but may be taken at the behest of the Council. Our agreement requires that my stays of research be of practical use to the school and community on its own terms, but does not require that the publications and other works that I produce as a linguist serve similar practical purpose (although ideally they would) (180). From early in 1983, I began to do far less of the taping of stories and the collection of cultural information. Instead, trained members of the Yipirinya community began making their own tapes and videos. This practice encourage much more natural interactions amongst speakers and often lead to more detailed information being collected than I would have been able to elicit. One drawback of this approach, however, is that transcribing is a much less popular task than recording, and people who collected tapes were often not available to help transcribe them. As most linguists would know, transcribing a tape is extremely difficult if one is not present at the time of collection and knows very little about the context in which they were made (187).

57

Mosel, Ulrike. 2006. Fieldwork and Community Language Work. In Gippert, Himmelman and Mosel, Essentials of Language Documentation. pp. 67 - 86. New York: Mouton de Gruyer. Rating 5 out of 5

Summary Mosel focuses on providing the fledgling linguist in the appropriate manner in which field can be started. He gives practical examples and simple explanations for why planning and community participation expand the depth of documentation. He provides an easy strategy for a documentation endeavor with limited resources and promotes a heavy reliance on local language consultants. Evaluation Mosel did a great job with this chapter. His goal obviously centers on preparing new linguists, hoping to do language documentation, with the appropriate expectations on how fieldwork should be conducted. He provides his reasoning in a succinct and clear manner. This is a chapter anyone doing language documentation should read if only to get appropriate expectations on doing fieldwork. Quotes As a consequence, academic field researchers focus their attention on others, on what makes this language unique in comparison to already researched languages, whereas the community members see their language in relation to the dominant official language and their neighbors languages. (Mosel 68)Such educational materials [which do not exactly reflect original recordings] may introduce a new form of the language (or at least type of text) into the community, hence arguable changing the language and the culture of language use. (Mosel 70) Language Documentation and language maintenance do not mean preserving the language untouched like a fossil in a museum. (Mosel 70)

XV. Product Mastering


Csato, Eva A. and David Nathan. 2003. Multimedia and documentation of endangered languages. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 1:73-84. London: SOAS. The authors lament that while the preceding decade or so has seen interest in documentary linguistics surge and standards for data collection and archiving take shape, the voices of the communities themselves have not become amplified (73) and relatively little emphasis has been placed on developing practical software applications and new interfaces to deliver the richness and diversity of collected materials to a diversity of users. Community members involvement in the process of documentation need not be limited to the two polarised possibilities of holding the camera or telling the researcher to turn it off. They can be eager users of the products of documentation (75). Researchers must make sure that the community 58

understands, appreciates, and looks forward to concrete outcomes of a documentation project (75). It is necessary to channel resources and competence that have been gained in collaboration with the [native consultants] back into the community (76). This aids in revitalization and demonstrates to the community that the researchers intend to interact with them in new ways. Creating multimedia projects with the collected data encourages new patterns and styles of cooperation. Their productions also provide linguists with new opportunities for interacting with speakers, materials, and learners. Multimedia projects reconfigure the relationship between data providers, product developers, and the products users (79). Such projects can also catalyze interaction between younger and older generations of language users and spur efforts at revitalization. The authors conclude by commenting on the move in documentary linguistics toward standardizing the encoding for archiving. They argue that proper encoding of the data for safe archivization is only one aspect of language documentation. The primary means of preserving languages is by enabling their communities to continue to use them, which can be accomplished by widely circulating a popular and easy-to-use multimedia CD. Also, the multimedia presentation of the data preserves their holistic integrity better than breaking them up and archiving them separately. Also, the encoding of the CD can be made rigorous enough to enable to data to be seamlessly converted to XML for archiving and other uses.

XVI. Cultural Context


Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2010. The role of mother-tongue schooling in eradicating poverty: A response to Language and poverty. Language, Volume 86.4: 910-932. A response to Language and Poverty ed. By Wayne Harbert, Bristol: Multilingual Mastters, 2008. The book concentrates on the role of poverty in language survival and the role of language in determining the economic status of its speakers. Linguistic diversity may be sustained through the economic and social marginalization of the poor, while language loss may be a consequence of pressures exerted on the poor to assimilate to the dominant socioeconomic structure and to shift to the language associated with it. Whether a language is maintained or lost under these conditions highlights the role that language plays in peoples lives, either facilitating or impeding access to financial resources (therefore to economically comfortable living conditions), to education, and to health services (912). The editors of the volume beat around the bush about defining poverty, though they underscore the connection between biological and linguistic diversity, noting that the areas of the world richest in both tend to be the poorest economically. The review author asserts bluntly that poverty is lack of money and economic resource/opportunity. The book does not stress enough the economic factors behind language choice and the fact that language can be a tool to be capitalized upon when advantageous or a hindrance to be discarded when not. 59

[L]inguists must be clear about how countries that are rich in ecological, cultural, and linguistic diversity but are economically poor can, with their limited financial means, satisfy both the human rights of their populations to evolve out of poverty and the alleged rights of their languages to each be used in the education system and/or other cultural domains (914). Notes in passing the interesting phenomenon of urbanization in Africa giving rise to large urban peripheries where the newcomers, recently fled from rural areas, live and mostly interact with members of their own extended families and ethnic groups in their own vernaculars; their children tend not to learn those vernaculars, but more dominant languages or lingua francas, while the constant influx of rural refugees renews knowledge of the vernaculars such that they are not lost. Notes in particular that many minority languages survive and are perpetuated because they are spoken in areas marginal to and/or left out entirely of worldwide modern economic development. This is especially true of Africa. Thus, poverty can contribute to linguistic diversity. It can also threaten it, however, inasmuch as groups who consider their languages to be holding them back economically can abandon them and adopt an LWC. The author interestingly observes that, in Africa at least, it is not the few, major European languages of colonization that threaten minority languages, because only elite minorities speak or learn the European tongues, though they control most of the economies and the upper echelons of society. In fact, most of the manual labor outfits that employ large groups of the poor operate in vernacular languages, which are thus kept relatively safe. There is also significant bidirectionality of human traffic between rural and urban areas, with disenchanted (aspiring) urbanites returning to their rural homelands keen on proving themselves as speakers of their ancestral languages (917). A main question to ask is what solution(s) does linguistics have to offer to populations that are certainly correct in treating their languages foremost as tools for adjustment to their changing socioeconomic ecologies rather than as representational systems? [W]hat concrete advice do linguists have to give politicians and economists who want to develop their countries economically but complain that multilingualism is too expensive for their means? (918) The chapter on the role of hegemonic languages (e.g. French) as tools empowering the elite in the formal economy and dominant languages empowering the masses of manual laborers in the informal economy does not go far enough in its analysis, since most minority languages (as distinct from the dominant languages, like Swahili or Amharic) either participate little in the informal economy or not at all, though they have a niche in the traditional subsistence economy. In discussing chapter 6 on the decline of Spanish in the U.S. under threat of dominant English, the author notes that the ethnographic fate of Spanish in the US is independent of its demographic strength worldwide, because the dynamics that bear on the vitality of a language as a vernacular are primarily local (921). Argues forcefully for economic issues as the chief factor in language vitality and revitalization, noting that classroom instruction in a language fails to revitalize it if there is not significant economic advantage pushing it in the public sphere, citing as examples French in Louisiana and Irish in Ireland, especially the gaeltachts. And 60

yet, the shift to a dominant language does not equate with economic prosperity, as the African slaves brought to the US made this shift, and still to this day their descendants exhibit high levels of poverty and underachievement. The author also argues that a distinction should be made in assessing the role of bilingual education in language loss between situations in which the child is forced to operate in a totally unfamiliar language of instruction, thus depriving him of his rights to education, or must simply choose one of the languages of his social environment, though it is not his ancestral tongue. Some children, he asserts, have more than one mother tongue and, thus, have a choice. Often what endangers languages is not that the language of education differs from the childs L1, but the fact that the child has a different L1 from his or her parents. Chapter 9, contributed by an economist, recognizes that language is only one factor in poverty. Vaillancourt is correct in observing that ones mother tongue can be seen as an ethnic attribute and a form of human capital (162) but also one whose market value can decrease or increase depending on where it is used (924). Because of his position that languages are tools to be used or abandoned as economic opportunity dictates, the author argues that we should respect the rights of communities to shift languages and should draw a sharp distinction between language maintenance and language preservation, the latter recognizing that languages may be valuable as museum artifacts (925) and comprising a significant goal of language documentation. He further notes that, pursuant to the I-language E-language dichotomy or, more traditionally, between langue and parole in French (925) there can no longer be said to be a language when all of its speakers are gone. Language is an abstraction that cannot be preserved separate from its speakers (925). In working with communities of endangered language speakers, the linguist is constrained by factors such as whether the community is situated economically in such a way as to enable them to devote time and energy to considering the fate of their language and whether they can afford the training to become involved. The author repeatedly cites the example of minority European languages dying out in America because the populations that spoke them integrated geographically with the dominant, English-speaking populace and abandoned their native tongues when they saw a competitive advantage to do so. Thus, he affirms that social integration is an enemy of linguistic diversity, especially when it means that groups that are economically and/or demographically less powerful must adopt the cultural ways of the dominant population (926). He notes that socioeconomic segregation has been a key factor in the vitality of African American Vernacular English. He makes the following provocative statement: There are really no language rights. Many people who are struggling to improve their living conditions in the current ever-changing socioeconomic ecologies are not concerned with maintaining languages and heritages, which are more properly archived in libraries and museums. The archiving is (to be) done by experts of some nonprofessional glossophiles (if I may suggest the term) (927). Linguistics must address issues arising from the real world of socioeconomic inequality more globally and not just from the point of view of languages as maps of world views and illustrations of 61

mental/cognitive variation (927). Notes that while economic empowerment must go hand in hand with linguistic empowerment if language revitalization is to occur, one could also argue that the economic empowerment of Native American groups through the casino industry has contributed significantly to endangerment of their native tongues. Thus success depends on the type of economy involved. The author also asks whether the new cultures created by communities that choose to abandon one language in favor of another are less authentic than the original and whether any culture is meant to remain static. He notes, again repeatedly, that to say that language loss causes loss of self-esteem is too simplistic, since there are scores of Americans whose ancestors also once spoke other languages who do not feel any particular low self-esteem. He suggests, rather, that loss of language and culture, and the resultant lowering of self-esteem, may actually be epiphenomena of the general malaise of being dispossessed and marginalized in ones own home (929). He also suggests that linguists look at who in endangered groups is clamoring most vocally against the demise of their languages and identity, those who are fighting for better command of a dominant language and more economic access or those who have already given up the native tongue and are functioning in the dominant language. This would provide a clearer picture of the speakers priorities and explain why Ladefoged (1992) argued against the romanticism and possible paternalism implicit in the usual view of linguists roles in fighting language endangerment and the role of language itself in identity and social life. We should clearly distinguish between what we, as linguists, can do realistically, such as documenting languages, from what we cannot, simply because we have no control over the real-world ecological factors that bear on the vitality of languages. Perhaps, once we have extricated these factors, we should be talking to those who create or (can) control the conditions that are so disadvantageous to particular languages, such as politicians and industrialists, instead of advising the victims with ineffective defense strategies. The latter strategy would be like keeping an endangered species in the same habitat that has become disadvantageous to it, just feeding it, and hoping the problem will go away (929-930). [L]anguages are here to serve our needs. Their rights, if there are any, must morally be subordinated to those of speakers (930).

Lewis, M. Paul. 2008. Remembering ethnicity: the role of language. ms. Examines the ways language is used for construction of ethnic identity and the ways in which language is constructed by ethnic identity, whether current or remembered. Asserts that language is the primary means by which identity and knowledge are remembered and transmitted across generations. There have been two past approaches to ethnic identity: the objectivist and the subjectivist. The former considers identity as a collection of observable behaviors that have come to be associated with a particular group; as behavior changes, the identity is altered as well. The latter considers that identity stems from something ontologically prior to 62

behaviors which motivates behavior; behaviors are dispensable, serving principally as symbols for the more basic source of identity and solidarity. The fundamental basis of identity is the desire to unify around perceived similarities and to separate from the other. The markers of identity can and will change as various others are encountered and come into contrastive focus (2). Language is one significant marker of identity, one that becomes so closely linked to a particular identity that it can seem that the language and the identity are one and the same. This notion of identity through language can be claimed even when one is not fully competent in the language; it suffices to remember and willingly associate with the language. This sense of identity may be focused or diffuse, that is, characterized by increased use of the distinguishing behaviors (like language) or by decreased use. Conversely, ethnic identity can also shape or construct language. Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory stresses that individuals define their social identity on the basis of group membership(s). Thus, individuals shape their use of language in order to represent themselves as members of their chosen group(s) and focused identities. Think of teenagers using certain expressions in order to fit in. This phenomenon has been commonly observed in world creoles where speakers vary speech so as to more closely approximate a standard language at times (the so-called acrolect) and, at others, so as to be most divergent from it (the so-called basilect) (4). Most of the time, speakers fall in the middle of this continuum, speaking a kind of mesolect. Thus speakers freely alter their speech as it suits them to do so (cf. Mufwenes emphasis on language as a tool and human capital). So also codeswitching has to do with the focused identity the speaker wishes to project. These are also the dynamics behind maintenance of regional and class dialects/accents. While linguistic features can and will be altered over time, it is the underlying identity that is being expressed, now through one set of symbols, and eventually through another (5). Some groups acquire or develop multiple identities associated with multiple languages; this is one common result of globalization. Along with each identity and language commons an associated body of lore and shared historical knowledge. There is also a shared body of knowledge relating to our environment and relationship(s) with it. While this mobility of identities offers opportunities for more rewarding identities, it poses a threat to smaller, lesspowerful and less obviously rewarding identities (6). In this game of identity switching, loss of language is a symptom, not the cause, of loss of ethnic identity. Uses the phrase Alzheimerization of an identity (6) to characterize the loss of the knowledge encoded in a particular set of linguistic forms as a result of language loss. In this sense, language can be seen as the means of transmission of identity and its associated bodies of knowledge. Certainly there are other non-verbal channels by which the memory of a shared identity can be preserved and transmitted such as the cuisine, dress, visual arts or dance, ceremonies and monuments, but the narrative that makes sense of those non-verbal semiotic systems must perforce be expressed in words (6). Argues that the key to identity and language maintenance depends firstly and foundationally on the creation of space for that identity through reinforcement of the values and beliefs and of the 63

rewards and benefits associated with that identity (7). If this intangible core of identity maintenance is neglected, attempts to preserve language, especially through writing, will fail. A strong core of identity leads to strong oral tradition. Once the core of the identity shrinks, orality likewise recedes into increasingly ritualized fossilizations and the language begins to die. In groups negotiating multiple identities, there are only three configurations of identity that are likely to remain stable over time: 1) Internal ID only (viz. maintaining only a single, traditional ID; the hardest to maintain and requires isolation and heavy intentional investment); 2) Internal and External ID (viz. adding new IDs onto a traditional one resulting in a kind of compartmentalization of IDs with certain behaviors associated with the one and certain with the other; often this strategy involves a division of labor along generational lines with the older ones maintaining the traditional ID while the younger adopt the new ones; as the youth age, they gradually return to and maintain the traditional ID leaving the new ways to their children; often accompanies emigration and return between rural and urban settings at different stages in life; can also happen through hybridization where neither ID orientation remains pure); 3) External ID only (viz. adoption of the new and abandonment of the old; common in immigrant groups over time). This is a considerable oversimplification; these three configurations are stopping points on a continuum of identity remembrance (9). In terms of language, diglossia often results from negotiating multiple IDs, where each language is associated with a given set of activities and/or a particular setting and never the twain shall meet. In such situations, one language is considered to possess more prestige than the other, conveniently labeled H and L respectively. There are three stable diglossic configurations: 1) Diglossic L, where the isolated community is largely monolingual in their own vernacular (parallels Internal ID only); 2) Diglossic L and H: parallels additive Internal and External ID; 3) Diglossic H: parallels External ID only. In addition to identity configurations, there are also knowledge-base configurations that parallel the other breakdowns: 1) Inside KN only; 2) Inside and Outside KN; 3) Outside KN only. How a group negotiates contact with outside IDs is reflected in strategies of dealing with new realms of discourse: you can simply use the Outside language to discuss the area, or borrow, transliterate, and assimilate key terms, or actually develop native terms that represent the concepts. Some groups choose not to make their identity, language, and knowledge available to others. Most minoritized groups, however, struggle with the task of self-representation and with efforts to gain recognition and to be heard. Generally they are laboring against negative attitudes, inequalities, and the hegemonic devaluation of who they are and so are pressured to abandon the Inside and with it their language and their knowledge-bases (13-14).

Woodbury, Tony. 2011. Language documentation. Ch 9. Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. 64

Discussion of the impracticality of creating a theorization and standard of what must be include in a good corpus, due to the priority of accommodating the needs of the community, and the purposes it is intended for. Calls for delicacy in balancing quality and quantity in a corpus, with an eye to diversity. Includes a discussion of the basics of documentation, the role of an interdisciplinary team, and the different stages and forms of a language that can exist simultaneously and the tendency of linguists to desire the nostalgic form.

Crawford, James. Seven Hypotheses on Language Loss Causes and Cures, in Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Gina Cantoni, ed. Revised ed. Special issue of Northern Arizona Universitys Center for Excellence in Education Monograph Series, Perspectives. Stephen D. Lapan and Sam Minner, Gen. Eds. Flagstaff: 2007, 45-60. Rating: 3 Summary: Looking at case studies drawn from the experiences of Native North American languages, the author examines the questions how do we know when a language is threatened and what are the causes of and cures for endangerment? He presents a list of seven hypotheses explaining what causes language endangerment and how it can be reversed. Evaluation: This piece does not add much that is new to the discussion of language endangerment, though the author does include a nice paragraph emphasizing the factor of choice from within the community, while also acknowledging that external elements may impact the real nature of choice in many circumstances. The author relies heavily, perhaps too much so, on the work of Joshua Fishman, to the extent that the present chapter runs the risk of being derivative. Early on, he notes that no one has yet developed a comprehensive theory of language shift as to its causes and prevention. One would have liked the author to have worked more in that vein. Nonetheless, it is useful to have a discussion of this matter clearly organized and presented in list form as this one is. Details: The article adumbrates three symptoms of threat to a languages health: 1) fluency increases with age; 2) use retreats into fewer and fewer domains; 3) fewer and fewer children learn the language. The seven hypotheses on language loss and cures are: 1) Language shift is very difficult to impose from without (i.e. brute, external force is both rare and ineffective; some degree of consensuality from the community itself must come into play; cf. notions of governmentality from Pennycock above); 2) Language shift is determined primarily by internal changes within language communities themselves: demographic forces like migration and intermarriage; economic opportunities; and desire for social identification all influence the choice to shift; 3) If language choices reflect social and cultural values, 65

language shift reflects a change in these values (i.e. language loss stems not from ideas about language but a deeper substrate of belief that influences the use of language; cf. Mufwene and Lewis (2008) from Cultural Context module); 4) If language shift reflects a change in values, so too must efforts to reverse language shift (RLS) (i.e. combatting language shift requires combating the complex of ideas and beliefs that underlie and precede it); 5) Language shift cannot be reverse by outsiders, however well-meaning; 6) Successful strategies for reversing language shift demand an understanding of the stage we are currently in (i.e. solutions need to be specific to the situation and individual nature of each situation); 7) At this stage in the U.S.A., the key task is to develop indigenous leadership (i.e. community-wide efforts are essential). The author notes importantly that the extraordinary vitality of the Mississippi Choctaw language has to do with the extreme social isolation in which it has existed since the tribes forced removal from their homeland in the 1830s. Quotes: More often, however, languages die in a more complex and gradual way, through the assimilation of their speakers into other cultures (47). My first hypothesis is that the external forces that are often blamed, especially direct attempts to suppress a language, cannot alone be responsible, for the simple reason that people resist. Language is the ultimate consensual institution. Displacing a communitys vernacular is equivalent to displacing its deepest systems of belief. Even when individuals consent to assimilation, it is enormously difficult to give up ones native language. This is especially true as we grow older, because language is tied so closely to our sense of self: personality, ways of thinking, group identity, religious beliefs, and cultural rituals, formal and informal. Such human qualities are resistant to change at the point of a gun; witness the survival of indigenous tongues through centuries of colonialism (47). By the late 1880s, the agency [viz. the Bureau of Indian Affairs, BIA] mandated English-only rules for all Indian students, including those in religious schools. This policy was bitterly opposed by certain missionaries, who had long ago discovered the effectiveness of using native languages for both educational and religious purposes. But the missionary schools, which received substantial funding from the federal government, ultimately lost this battle (Indian Offie, 1888) (48). Yet ultimately speakers themselves are responsible, through their attitudes and choices, for what happens to their native language. Families choose to speak it in the home and teach it to their children, or they dont. Elders choose to speak the language on certain important occasions or to insist on its use in certain important domains, or they dont. Tribal leaders choose to promote the tribal language and accommodate its speakers in government functions, social services, and community schools, or they dont. This is not to say that such decisions are made in a vacuum, or that they are entirely deliberate. Language choices are influenced, consciously

66

and unconsciously, by social changes that disrupt the community in numerous ways (50). Opposition to bilingual education has been fanned by some fundamentalist Christian groups, who fear its potential to encourage Navajo religion (52).

Fishman, Joshua. What do you Lose when you Lose your Language? in Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Gina Cantoni, ed. Revised ed. Special issue of Northern Arizona Universitys Center for Excellence in Education Monograph Series, Perspectives. Stephen D. Lapan and Sam Minner, Gen. Eds. Flagstaff: 2007, 71-81. Rating: 2 Summary: The author reflects on the nature of language loss and what all it entails beyond the languages themselves. The tone and discussion are fairly personal, with no substantive intellectual argument and no sources cited. Evaluation: The piece is fairly unnuanced and comes off as nave, especially in light of the articles by Ricento, Pennycock, and De Klerk cited above. There are some quotable moments, but the article is largely fluff. Details: The author stresses an emic perspective on language loss, asserting that when you ask a speaker of a dying language what it means to lose it, the answer that comes back is quite different from the academic discussion of the indexical and symbolic nature of languages. The emic perspective stresses language as holiness (sanctity), kinship, and a moral imperative. Language restoration is mostly unsuccessful because of the power differential between minority and dominant cultures, because people resist the idea that something is happening to the language, because people do not know what to do and turn to formal education policies that only convey the language as an academic discipline, not the living, breathing vehicle for expression/identity that grows up first at home. In seeking to revitalize a language, one must not aim too high, but keep the focus on the home, family, non-institutional settings where identities are molded. Quotes: A language long associated with the culture is best able to express most easily, most exactly, most richly, with more appropriate over-tones, the concerns, artifacts, values, and interests of that culture. That is an important characteristic of the relationship between language and culture, the indexical relationship. It is not a perfect relationship. Every language grows; every culture changes. Some words hang on after they are no longer culturally active (72). The most important relationship between language and culture that gets to the heart of what is lost when you lose a language is that most of the culture is in 67

the language and is expressed in the language. Take it away from the culture, and you take away its greetings, its curses, its praises, its laws, its literature, its songs, its riddles, its proverbs, its cures, its wisdom, its prayers (72). When you are talking about the language, most of what you are talking about it the culture (72). Can you be Hispanic without speaking Spanish? It is a new question, and the truth is that everybody has a nephew or a niece who does not speak any Spanish (75). People generally do not understand the difference between, for example, mother tongue acquisition, mother tongue use, and mother tongue transmission. They are not the same thing. So, they frequently settle for acquiring the language not as a mother tongue, but during the school experience. By then, it is not the mother tongue, because they already have another mother tongue. And schools are no inter-generational language transmission agencies. Schools just last a certain number of hours and a certain number of years and then, after that, they are over. How is the language learned there going to be transmitted to the next generation? (76). The funny thing about literacy, even in languages of great literacy, is that every generation starts off with zero literacy (78). That is not the way mother tongues work. Mother tongues are selfsustaining and a new generation does not wait until it goes to school to get its mother tongue. It usually gets its mother tongue at home in the community, in the neighborhood, among the lover ones the ones shaping the identity of the child (78).

Johnstone, Barbara. 2000. The Individual Voice in Language. Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 405-424. Argues for an individual-focused approach to linguistics rather than the traditional bigger-picture approach. Discusses the role of the individual in language work, discourse, and language change. Lists advantages to such an approach.

King, Kendall A. Language revitalization processes and prospects: Quichua in the Ecuadorian Andes. Clevedon, UK. Multilingual Matters LTD, 2001. 68

Rating: 3 Summary: Discusses the importance and methodology of language revitalization, using the Quichua speech community of Ecuador as a case study. Differentiates between language revitalization and RLS, or reversing language shift. Main focus is on the areas of language shift, language planning, and ethnography of communication as they relate to revitalization, in this case among the Saraguros. Evaluation: Good as an introduction to those new to the idea of language revitalization or perhaps not quite sold on it; however, not a very practical guide to those wishing to embark on a LR project of their own. Focuses more on the squishy (yet still important) aspects of LRspecifically cultural and socioeconomic dynamics involved in language shift. Gives little discussion of the role of language documentation in revitalization. Consequently, one finishes the reading with a an enlightened sense of LR through the case study of the Saraguros, but is left with the nagging question of how this information can be used among other speech communities. I feel like this book would be best aimed at anthropologists. Details: Delves into the national and local context of the Quichua-speaking Saraguros, giving the reader a good background. Also analyzes language use in the schools of the 2 Saraguro villages discussed, bringing the important aspect of local education into the discussion. If the reader needs a good differentiation between RLS (reversing language shift) and language revitalization, he has come to the right place. Quotes: [issues of language revitalization] Given the imperiled state of so many of the world's languages, the need to focus on the practical [in language revitalization] is extremely pressing. Yet it is also important to analyze the linguistic, socioeconomic, and cultural dynamics which underlie language revitalization. p. 12 [main goal of language revitalization] ...all efforts which fall short of this critical aim[RLS, or reversing language shift] are short-term goals which merely bide time before the inevitable loss of the language[...] Although the expansion of the use of the language into new domains might well be an important aspect of the process of RLS, the primary and critical aim is reinstatement of home and family transmission of the language. p.24

Aguavil, A., Aguavil, F., Calazacon, M. (2001) A Counterweight: the Documentation of the Culture and Language of the Tsachila. In 69

Haboud, M & Ostler, N (eds.), Endangered Languages: Voices and Images (pp. 166-171). Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages. In the past, outsiders have come into the Tsachila community of Ecuador through the forms of eco-tourism, bilingual schools, and documentation and have created materials that are strictly from the point of view of the outsider and have no consideration for the views and voices of the indigenous people themselves. The authors are countering this unilateral approach to documentation by taking on the task of documenting their culture and language themselves, ensuring that the materials of the language are truly from the hands of the Tsachila. Rating : 5 Summary : In the past, outsiders have come into the Tsachila community of Ecuador through the forms of eco-tourism, bilingual schools, and documentation and have created materials that are strictly from the point of view of the outsider and have no consideration for the views and voices of the indigenous people themselves. The authors are countering this unilateral approach to documentation by taking on the task of documenting their culture and language themselves, ensuring that the materials of the language are truly from the hands of the Tsachila. Evaluation : A concise, enjoyable, and eye-opening article about the importance of capturing a culture and language from the perspective of the insider. Presents several views of indigenous peoples that the reader will doubtlessly find him/herself guilty of subconsciously havingthus, the article is powerful in its convictive quality. Details : Presents the often detrimental effects of eco-tourism on an indigenous society. Asserts the need for collaboration with outsider researchers at some point, even if the bulk of the documentation is done by community members. Quotes: [eco-tourism and indigenous cultures] ...eco-tourism reinforces the notion that the value of an indigenous culture is based on the degree to which the culture conforms to the superficial romantic notions of the tourists. It also leads to the proprietary attitude on the part of the outsiders. p. 168 [avoiding bias in documentation] While no project can be completely theoretically neutral, documentation does stress the importance of not limiting the material collected to any particular theoretical perspective and academic interest. p. 169

Dobrin, L., Austin, P., & Nathan, D. (2007) Dying to be counted: the commodification of endangered languages in documentary linguistics. The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project. 70

Recently, the moral incentive to document moribund languages has increased, and rightly so. However, the authors take issue with exactly how documentary linguists are going about doing their research, specifically how languages are being reduced to mere objects and being viewed through only the perspective of Western ideology. Whether consciously or subconsciously, languages are being viewed as common, comparable, and exchangeable. (p.3)

Rating: 2 Summary: Recently, the moral incentive to document moribund languages has increased, and rightly so. However, the authors take issue with exactly how documentary linguists are going about doing their research, specifically how languages are being reduced to mere objects and being viewed through only the perspective of Western ideology. Whether consciously or subconsciously, languages are being viewed as common, comparable, and exchangeable. (p.3) Evaluation: I felt as though the authors' main message was difficult to pinpoint. As I worked through the paper, I thought to myself that I sort of had an idea of what they were trying to get across, but found it difficult to paraphrase. This is perhaps due to the (I believe) unnecessary wordiness of the article; or maybe the lack of practical ways in which to avoid the commodification they are warning against. Overall, I think this paper is not worth the time and effort it takes to determine what exactly the authors are conveying.

Hinton, Leanne. (2003) Language Revitalization. In Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. pp.44-57. Describes revitalization as building on language maintenance, which until recent times has been a main focus of documentation. Discusses four main topics pertaining to language revitalization: Documentation, bilingual education, promoting orality, and intergenerational transmission. Divides literature on revitalization into four functional categories, then recommends titles in each category. Rating: 5 Summary : Describes revitalization as building on language maintenance, which until recent times has been a main focus of documentation. Discusses four main topics pertaining to language revitalization: Documentation, bilingual education, promoting orality, and intergenerational transmission. Divides literature on revitalization into four functional categories, then recommends titles in each category. 71

Evaluation: An invaluable resource for those seeking practical guides in the topics listed in language revitalization. For instance, if a researcher needs more information on how to make a dictionary or ensure that they get adequate documentation of a language, the article recommends worthwhile reads. Details: Discusses how documentation alone is usually not enough to revitalize a language; rather, it just pickles, or preserves, it. Quotes: [ need for documenting conversation] Language revitalization also shows us ways in which documentation has been inadequate in the past. Perhaps the most glaring gap is conversation. [] Yet it is conversation, and the ability to converse in the language, that modern language activists seek to re-establish in their communities. p. 46 [failure of bilingual education] Through insufficient training and insufficient support, bilingual education has failed to create bilingual children in most Native American communities. p. 47 [importance of intergenerational transmission] ...families must retrieve their rightful position as the first teachers of our languages, and...we must use that plus everything else in the litany and even more, in order to save the languages.

Blair, H., Rice, S., Wood, V., & Janvier, J. (2000) Daghida: Cold Lake First Nation Works Towards Dene Language Revitalization. In Indigenous th Languages Across the Community. Proceedings of the 7 Annual Conference on Stabilizing Indigenous Languages (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 11-14, 2000), pp. 89-98. Rating: 4 Summary : Describes the Dene Suline language revitalization project implemented by the Cold Lake First Nation reserve community in Canada and the University of Alberta. This project involves three major components: sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and linguistic research; language retention and education; and cultural preservation and revival. Evaluation: This paper is chock full of good ideas for anyone planning a language revitalization project. In fact, the paper states that this project hoped to be a model for other language communities to revive their languages. It gives a good overview of the steps taken for each component, including documentation as foundation. Promotes a multi-faceted approach to language revitalization, encompassing psychological and cultural factors, which would doubtlessly make the program more 72

likely to succeed. My only wish is that they would include a follow-up on how well the Daghida project worked. Quotes: [multiple uses for linguistic material] gOur chief aim is to produce materials for pedagogical and linguistic audiences. That is, we need materials that have a practical learner application as well as materials about the language that can be used by linguists interested in comparative aspects. p. 4 [how to develop new terms in a language gCreating new terms in the language is critical if the language is to be relevant in modern society, and it is essential if primary and secondary educational materials are to be developed in the Dene language and used in bilingual classes. But in order for any 'invented' lexicalizations to stand a chance of acceptance, we need to determine the dominant lexicalization patterns in the language so that any coined terms will seem congruent with existing ones and thus be more likely to be adopted by today's speakers. p.4 [importance and uses of studying gestures in language] gA related crosscultural study planned by participants in the Daghida Project involves the recording and analysis of gesture use by both children and adult of Dene. McNeil (1992, 1997) and others have claimed that the gestures accompanying speech, in both shape and timing, are linked to lexico-grammatical structure p. 5-

Premsrirat, S. & Malone, D. (2003) Language development and language revitalization in Asia. In Mon-Khmer Studies: A Journal of Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures, 35: 101-120. Rating: 4 Summary: Describes the methods used for planning and implementing a revitalization program for a language that is mainly or wholly oral (no writing system), including the development of an orthography. Gives the case of such a program in action: the Chong Language Revitalization Project in Thailand. Reviews the need for this program and how it began, as well as lists its main components, problems encountered, and strides made. Evaluation: I appreciate the willingness of the authors to be forthcoming about the struggles being faced by the community members and implementers of the Chong program. I think this will also be valuable to the reader who may be planning a similar program in avoiding some of these problems by preparing for them ahead of time. Still, after seeing the list of the program's accomplishments despite obstacles, the reader will feel encouraged that language programs can and do workwith the community's support and involvement, that is. 73

Details: Gives a detailed diagram on p. 8 of the program's main componentsa useful tool that could be manipulated for any oral language in need of revitalization. Quotes: [tragedy of language loss] There are nine different words in Maya for the color blue in the comprehensive Porra Spanish-Maya Dictionary but just three Spanish translations, leaving six butterflies that can only be seen by the Maya, proving beyond doubt that when a language dies six butterflies disappear from the consciousness of the earth. (Shorris, 2000, p.43) p.1 [need for the community to be on-board in a revitalization program] Noted sociolinguist Joshua Fishman (1991, 2001) has presented a practical framework (see fig. 1) for ordering language planning priorities to help speakers of a threatened language revitalize their language and reverse the language shift that has taken place, if they so desire. Although outsiders can be the impetuseven the implementersfor various kinds of language development activities, there is no outside-in alternative for language revitalization.p.1-2 [necessity of documentation of moribund languages] Since Chong people are still shifting to the national language at a rapid pace, it is urgent to document Chong linguistic and cultural data, especially by the speakers in the community themselves. . 12

Grinevald, Colette. (2003) Speakers and documentation of endangered languages. In Austin, Peter K. (ed.), Language Documentation and Description. 1: 52-71. Rating: 5 Summary: Focuses on the human interaction aspect of language documentation, specifically with languages in need of revitalizationa topic often not explored much in conventional fieldwork courses. Discusses the relationship between linguist and speaker, and identifies four types of speakers of a language, with advice on who to work with among these four types. Evaluation : Probably the best reading on the subject of language documentation I have read so far, this article touches on perhaps the most important aspect of field workthe human part. It focuses on all the issues that undoubtedly will arise on the field, but are so seldom discussed in college courses. Thus, this reading gets the reader thinking about issues that they'll need to deal with before they begin their project, and help the reader plan how they will interact with all types of speakers and personalities in their speech community of research. What is more, it's my belief that in order to leave as positive of an impact on the community as possible, 74

positive, smooth interactions with the people are desiredand this article will give the reader a good starting point on how to make that a reality. Quotes: [choosing a community to work with] ...we try to attend to those communities that are seeking the help and expertise of linguists. Because we should always keep in sight another dimension of the business of documenting endangered languages, which is that there is in fact an acute shortage worldwide of trained linguists to tackle this formidable task and that we lack the people power to attend even to the communities that are looking for the kind of linguistic expertise we can offer them. p. 11 [choosing speakers to work with] It may be...good to keep in mind that a project of language documentation is a matter of a team effort, if the documentation is to be comprehensive, and that in that perspective, one should try never to turn away any member of the language community that expresses interest in working on the project, including less fluent semi-speakers or terminal speakers (or even non-speakers). p. 16 [best quote so farshortcomings of academia] ...academia does not focus on fostering common sense approaches. p.18 [difficulties of working with speakers] It is always a shock to realize the extent to which what may seem basic notions of repetition, translation, or assessment of grammaticality are bewildering and meaningless to such speakers, when these constitute the mainstay of the methods linguists are taught to use. p. 19

Amery, Rob. (2009) Phoenix or Relic? Documentation of Languages with Revitalization in Mind. In Language Documentation and Conservation 3(2): 138-148. Rating: 5 Summary: Advocates a shift in the field of documentary linguistics from a focus on traditional aspects of language (for mainly historical and typological purposes) to the types of speech events and genres of language that would be most helpful for posterity in revitalizing the language, especially since most of the languages being documented are moribund. Gives concrete examples of what might be useful to document in such a situation. Cites case studies throughout of Aboriginal languages. Evaluation: Delves deeper into the topic of ways of speaking, which we have touched on in class. A compelling and eye-opening read that could change the 75

course of a documentation corpus plan for the better. Explains and answers the question, What good is a corpus of data on a language if it can't be used well in a pedagogical sense? Quotes: [relationship between language documentation and description] There has been some debate as to whether description should be done concurrently with documentation, or whether description is an unwarranted distraction from the often urgent task of documentation. Some argue that analysis of data can take place at a later date, while others maintain that it is essential to analyze data as it is collected in order to be able to clarify misunderstandings and uncertainties and to inform additional documentation. p. 140 [preserving archaic or pure forms of a language] If 'sleeping' or so called 'dead' or 'extinct' languages are to be revived, what kind of language will the revived language be? Are we to attempt to speak a museum piece that is unchanged fromwhen it was last spoken on an everyday basis?[...]we dont allow the language to change and adapt and incorporate concepts, it will be most unsuited to talking about so many aspects of modern daily life. p. 141 -- Restricting language documentation to traditional domains and focusing on the pure or precontact form of the language is not necessarily in the best interests of those who may one day attempt to revive it. p .143

England, Nora C. 1992. Doing Mayan linguistics in Guatemala. Language 68: 29-35. The native population of Mayan speakers in Guatemala has become increasingly linguistically sophisticated, politically aware, and culturally concerned (29) in recent years. As a result, the communities themselves are coming together to voice concern over the manner in which linguists conduct fieldwork in the area and to seek to exert some control over those practices. Mayas make the point that linguistics is not done in a political vacuum. Someone pays for the research, and the reasons for funding one kind of research rather than another can be political. The personal motives that linguists have for choosing a research topic and a language or place for doing research are varied and certainly cover nonlinguistic considerations, including political ones. Doing research can affect various local situations, such as language maintenance, language shift, expanding literacy, and increase bilingualism, all of which enter into the local political equations. When 76

linguists are foreigners in their research area, as is the case with the vast majority of Mayan linguists, then the possibility that they represent some foreign governmental position arises. Similarly, because of the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics and other missionary groups, foreign linguists are often thought to represent religious interests. Furthermore, the language under investigation is spoken by people who are members of a linguistic community and also a political community (29-30). England argues that linguists should be sensitive to the inevitable politics that attend choice of consultants and examples both in gathering and in publishing corpora. The essential point being made here is that choice of examples, especially in minority languages or languages without a grand written literary tradition, does much more than illustrate a linguistic point: it also characterizes a language socially by providing it with an official, scholarly, and WRITTEN personality (32, emphasis original). She notes that certain Mayan groups have taken exception to the use of flea as a paradigm noun and kill as a paradigm verb. England also notes that the Mayas want linguists who work with them to actively engage in the politics of the area and take their side in confrontations involving native communities, rights, land, etc. [W]e must be aware of the political implications of what we write and, in a situation like that of Mayas of Guatemala, consciously take sides in a political confrontation (33). There is a widespread feeling among the native communities that linguists do not do enough to share their linguistic knowledge with locals and do not recognize enough the right of locals to study and the decide the destiny of their own languages. Mayas are suggesting, more and more frequently, that the proper role of the foreign linguist is to teach speakers of Mayan languages how to do linguistics (34). The local groups also want linguists to develop pedagogical and even prescriptive, standardized grammars, something many, more theoretically-minded linguists have refused to do. To refuse, however, casts linguists in a bad, uncooperative, and unappreciative light.

77

You might also like