museum exhibit: endangered languages

Wed Sep 4 10:37:11 UTC 2013

Dear Lena,

You initiated a interesting discussion, that's  always usefull.

I strongly agree with your conception, and can only suggest to you (cause
now I'm preparing an exhibiton as a curator too) that you hold on to your
conception cause everybody have right for his/her own opinion, but this
exhibition is your work and your presentation of the topic. 

Good luck with your exhibiton, hope it will be available on net!

Kind regards to you and all!

Irena Kolbas

From: Endangered Languages List
[mailto:ENDANGERED-LANGUAGES-L at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Lena
Terhart
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 11:13 AM
To: ENDANGERED-LANGUAGES-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: museum exhibit: endangered languages

Thanks Elaine and Irena for sharing your experience with musealization of
the topic.

Collecting words of different languages for the same concept/object also
came to my mind in the first place. However, I resigned the idea, because it
may be impossible for some languages to find a word that totally matches the
concept in question. There may be several words focussing on different
aspects of the concept or there may not be a word at all. In addition,
speakers may use a loan to refer to exactly this one concept and therefore
the collected word would not be the best choice to represent the language.
Moreover, there are practical reasons against it: Remember that I also asked
for sound files, if possible. I guess it would be even harder to find sound
files of a predetermined word or cut the specific word from a longer
discourse.

Let me sum up the arguments that speak for and against the coffin/death
metaphor.

Arguments of the opponents of a coffin/death image:

- discrimination because languages are not dead + the fact that dying is
irreversible negates revitalization efforts

- should be avoided to prevent a self-fulfilling prophecy

- negativity of the image: people should not be confronted with it, because
they may want to avoid the whole topic if it is presented negatively and
children should not be confronted with such negative images at all

Arguments of the supporters of a coffin/death image:

- negative image is appropriate to represent a negative issue

Although the mass and kind of reactions from people that work hard to
revitalize languages teaches us that there is hope for some languages, we
should not forget that there is still a big number of languages that cease
to be transmitted to the next generations, that are hardly spoken anymore,
and that do not necessarily leave any material for future revitalization
efforts.

Perhaps many reactions would have been less emotional, if I had proposed to
exhibit a coffin with a label "linguistic diversity" printed on or in it.
Let me repeat that I never had the intention to classify any of the
languages as dead or dying, but considered the words I wanted to fill the
coffin with to represent diversity.

Some of you liked the picture of the three trees in different states of
health as proposed by Christian Chiarcos. The problem with the three trees
is that the classificatory interpretation is inherent, even more inherent
than in a single coffin and I don't have the will, nor do I think I have the
right or the expertise to decide how to sort the languages onto the tree(s).
Imagine a language is learnt by children, yet there is only a small number
of speakers, no educational material and pressure from a "bigger" language,
where should I put the language? Onto the healthy tree, because there are
young speakers? Or onto the drought-strucken tree, because its future is
more uncertain than that of the big languages? And where on the perishing
tree should I put a language with a few speakers and at least some material
or beginning efforts of revitalization? Closer to the vital or closer to the
dead end of the tree? Whatever I would decide, it could only lead to people
being offended even more.

The pictures of hope that some of you want to paint are certainly very
beautiful and they are appropriate if people already know about language
endangerment. But this is not the case for the general public in Germany.
Hope? Yes. But what for?

I will meet the curator of the exhibition tomorrow. I am keeping her
informed about the ongoing discussion. She knows more about space and budget
constraints and about how to fit the exhibit into the general concept of the
exhibition. I hope that we can come up with more concrete ideas of
realization.

Lena

Am 03.09.2013 um 20:53 schrieb Elaine Gold:

I've been following this discussion with some interest because two years ago
a group of linguists founded 'The Canadian Language Museum' with a goal of
sharing the richness of the languages of Canada with the general public. So
far we have created two travelling exhibits (one on Canadian English, one on
the Inuit language) and are preparing exhibits on Canadian French and Cree.
We continue to grapple with the question of how best to present information
about languages that the viewers don't speak in a way that will keep their
interest. So I will throw in my two cents!

Regardless of the central image you use (coffin/phoenix/tree) I am concerned
about having the exhibit made up of a large variety of unrelated words in a
large number of languages. I worry that the glut of information will be
overwhelming for the viewer if it is not organized in some way. I have found
that visitors to exhibits about language like numbers,  maps,  writing
systems and a clear message.  With respect to numbers,  you might already be
planning to give the number of languages (approximately) currently spoken
and how quickly they are disappearing. Maps showing where these languages
are spoken would definitely be a bonus! Children could try their hands at
different writing systems. And for a clear message -  you might want to
consider having the same concept represented in different languages and
connecting it to German - eg. In German we say 'Tisch' but here are 50
different words for Tisch'.  

Another question that you might want to answer is - why should the viewer
care that these languages are disappearing? Can't people express themselves
as well in German or English or Mandarin? Can the exhibit communicate a
reason to care? I personally prefer a theme that will celebrate the
diversity of languages rather than focus on death.

Since the exhibit is opening on September 16, there really isn't much time
for changing the exhibit content. I do think it's wonderful that the
Children's Museum is creating this exhibit about language and is including
information about endangered languages.

Elaine Gold, University of Toronto

Chair, Canadian Language Museum

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