Introduction to the project:

We intend to interview fellow researchers on endangered languages about their fieldwork experiences, focusing in particular on the challenges of conducting linguistic fieldwork in fragile speech communities. The findings will be published in a book with the working title "Linguistic research in fragile language communities: Lessons from the field".

The field of linguistics has heard an international ethical call to assist in the documentation of endangered languages. Linguists have responded by working to develop programs to educate and support documentationalists. As they enter the field, these linguists take on personal responsibility for linguistic community development, language teaching, and language revitalization. In some cases, these linguists may be charged with creating the only documentation that will exist for a given language, serving as the only liaison between their language community and linguistic academic, and providing the only academic input into community language revitalization efforts. In other cases, they must integrate their work into layers of previous or ongoing academic and social intervention, which can greatly complicate their task. It is in these fragile language communities that we see the need for research on goals, methodology and academic preparation. It is our own colleagues, the linguists who have experience in working with fragile communities, whom we wish to interview for this project.

On the academic side, the nature and quality of data is also affected by linguistic fragility. Linguistic methodology necessarily differs, and if any success is to be achieved, goals must often be adjusted. It is easy to tell a student to gather data from a variety of linguistic genres such as every-day conversation, narrative, formal oratory in addition to elicited paradigms. It is completely different to actually gather these data if the language is not spoken on a day to day basis, if there is nobody who still understands formal oratory, and nobody to listen to a narrative. Similarly, a typology of speakers is useful only if there is a large number of speakers with an interest in language work: If there are only 15 speakers willing to work with a linguist, then chances are very high that particular documentation tasks will not be possible. The field situations are often very different, leading to questions such as, "Who is the language community? Who gets to decide what happens with the language? What level of revitalization is possible? What is the proper role for the linguist in revitalization? What is the top priority for the community (as opposed to the researcher)? What challenges are there in working almost exclusively with elderly people? What challenges are there in working with no monolingual speakers?" and many others. We hope to answer some of these questions. Foci of our interest include community relations; work flow; unexpected, irregular, or patchy data; linguistic fragmentation through different genres or registers; data protection and preservation; results, dissemination and evaluation of project success.

We also know that the questions that have arisen out of our own work in fragile language communities in North America are not the only questions. For this reason, rather than writing a book that will inevitably be colored primarily by our personal experiences, we want to open the discussion to a much larger group of linguists whose experiences may complement our own. We have identified a number of challenges above and will be happy to send you a more complete list. Depending on your own experiences, you could discuss one of those or you could add to the list. You could submit your answers in writing, or be interviewed by us, by Skype or telephone, or as chance allows in our respective travel arrangements (our work is unfunded at present, but chance can be our friend.) Allow us to quote or to paraphrase, be named or be anonymous, respond to questions or simply instruct us in the areas you feel are most important.

Our methodology will not involve computation. We are interested in the expression of our participants' ideas. However, this book will not be asimple compilation of individual experiences. We would like to address the basic question: what does it mean for linguistic work to be successful in a fragile language community? We hope to be able to consider this question and to arrive at some answers that will help the field of linguistics to advance as more and more language communities reach states of fragility.

If you are interested in participating in our research, simply contact one or both of us and we will send you a consent form and our questionnaire. We will then discuss how to best be in touch with you.

Dr. Olga Lovick
Department of Interdisciplinary Programs
First Nations University of Canada
(306) 790 5950 ext. 3311
Olgalithophile.com

Dr. Siri Tuttle
Alaska Native Language Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
907-474-5708
sgtuttlealaska.edu

Linguistic Field(s): Language Documentation

http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-281.html