ELL: clarification about SIL from an external point o
endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
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Thu Mar 18 20:39:00 UTC 1999
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From: tsc_msea at SIL.ORG
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 15:39:00 -0500
Subject: Re[2]: ELL: clarification about SIL from an external point o
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I would like to address a couple of the issues about SIL that have
arisen recently.
First, I'd like to say that I am speaking as an individual
member of
SIL and not as an official spokesman. Also I can only speak to
issues
that I am aware of, and obviously I can't talk about what I
don't
know.
Matthew McDaniel had some specific comments with implied
questions
that I feel I can respond to.
1. First Matthew said, "It is said that SIL and Wycliffe
have the same
board."
They do not have the same board and are separate
corporations. The
Wycliffe board governs an international
group of many national
(non-western and western) organizations
that relate to the sending
groups and individuals in the various home
countries. In contrast, the
SIL board directs the language work in
various other countries. The
governing boards are not comprised of the
same individuals although
each board has a few members who
participate in the meetings of the
other board.
SIL is composed of individual members who are volunteers, responsible
for raising their own support. At the individual member level, there
are people who join Wycliffe but who never join SIL. Other
individual
members join Wycliffe and then join SIL. There are also members of
SIL
who come from countries where there is no Wycliffe organization to
join. Many who join SIL are linguists and do the work of
linguistics,
sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, literacy, etc. Others join
SIL
in order to support the work of those language workers.
2. Matthew also said, "It is said frequently that SIL was made
up to
take the heat off practices that Wycliffe was engaged in
and present a
secular face, all the while able to fade back and forth
through the
wall at will."
SIL and Wycliffe were formed and then incorporated around
the same
time in the 1930's. From the beginning these
organizations worked on
different tasks in different locations with different
audiences. SIL
is an organization that supports linguistic work
(descriptive and
applied) in minority languages of the world and
trains people in
linguistics. I am a member of both organizations.
3. In addition Matthew said, "Maybe someone with
specific information
on this could reply and possible someone at
upper management at SIL
could either substantiate or discredit the
statement in a book that
SIL was organized for this reason and has
the same board as Wycliffe,
in which case they are not seperate."
I'm not sure which book Matthew is
talking about. Books have been
written criticizing SIL and/or
Wycliffe, and books have been written
praising SIL and/or
Wycliffe. Also both SIL and Wycliffe
(separate
publishers) have published books
about their respective organizations
or certain work that people who
belong to the organization have
undertaken. It is very easy to
find statements of either a pro or con
nature about either organization.
It is not clear to me from
the statement what `this
reason' is, and in
fact there are many
reasons that individuals
have found SIL to be the
best available vehicle
for them to do their
language work and serve
some minority people
groups. I believe that SIL
and Wycliffe were each
organized to facilitate
the particular work that
each organization
does.
According to the last part of Matthew's statement, I take it that
Matthew would be willing to agree that Wycliffe and SIL are separate
since they in fact do not have the same board.
A little note on which projects SIL attempts to help
in. SIL has
neither unlimited funds nor unlimited personnel. All
of the personnel
are volunteers. Each organization determines which
projects in which
areas it will place priority and which projects it
will staff if
personnel are available. In working in SE Asia, SIL
has cooperated
with various universities and other local
organizations.
In Northern Thailand, we have cooperated with Payap
University in
training linguists at the MA level, with
students from Akha, Sgaw
Karen, Pwo Karen, Rawang, Jingphaw, Jirel,
Tamil, Hmong, Northern Thai
and other language groups receiving training. We
also have the Applied
Linguistics Training Program, which holds
workshops lasting from a few
days to a month. There are a variety of foci for
the workshops. But in
the writers workshops, which focus on creating
literature in the
writers' various languages, writers from Akha,
White Hmong, Blue
Hmong, Lisu, Khmu, Rawang, Sgaw Karen, Black
Lahu, Lahu Shi, So, Iu
Mien, Lua and other language groups have
participated. These programs
seem at the moment to be good places for us to
concentrate our limited
resources.
So anyway, that's what I know about some of
the issues in Matthew
questions.
Thank you all for listening.
Tom Tehan
______________________________
Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: ELL:
clarification about SIL from
an external point of v
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: ELL:
clarification about SIL from
an external point of v
Author: akha at loxinfo.co.th
at internet
Date: 17-03-99 10:58 AM
It is said that SIL and
Wycliffe have the same
board.
It is said frequently that
SIL was made up to take the
heat off practices that
Wycliffe was engaged in and
present a secular face, all
the while able to fade
back and forth through the
wall at will.
Maybe someone with specific
information on this could
reply and possible someone
at upper management at SIL
could either substantiate or
discredit the statement
in a book that SIL was
organized for this reason
and has the same board as
Wycliffe, in which case they
are not seperate.
Matthew
... (snipped)
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