museum exhibit: endangered languages

[Dave Sayers]

This has been a fascinating debate, and mostly productive, if a little scratchy in 
places! I've now seen two big opportunities not only to contribute but also to throw 
in blatantly self-aggrandising plugs to my own work...

First is on Cornish. My 2012 article (http://goo.gl/7WZGl) charted the recent history 
of the Cornish revival, and its social and political idiosyncrasies. There has since 
been another article on the topic, by Zsuzsanna Renkó-Michelsén at Helsinki 
University: http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2013.4.2.10. It's a very interesting 
case study (I would say that!), and it leads me to...

Second, the concept of 'linguistic diversity' is something I've spent most of my 
academic career scrutinising and picking over, so I'd like to think I've got 
something to chip in. I'm afraid it's not really part of the solution though! (at 
least, not an easy solution). In my PhD research (look out, here comes the other 
shameless plug!: http://academia.edu/187910/) I looked at this from the perspective 
of variationist sociolinguistics (something that language revivalists have not been 
all that occupied with) and then from the perspective of language revivals (something 
that variationist sociolinguists are not all that occupied with). I drew out a 
definition of linguistic diversity that went well beyond a simple headcount of 'all 
the languages', and took into account intra-linguistic variation (current differences 
of e.g. dialect) and variability (new differences that might arise in future). Looked 
at from this much broader perspective, language revival -- or most contemporary 
models of language revival, with the inevitable privileging of some endangered 
languages over others, and then some level of standardisation of those privileged 
languages -- cannot really protect something as abstract, diffuse and unknowable as 
linguistic diversity. And in any case, the actual record of 'success' in language 
revival, even on its own terms, is not a glittering one. (That mixed record of 
success has of course sparked a great deal of introspection and soul-searching within 
the field; perhaps not enough, and not of a sufficiently fundamental nature, but 
there is at least a good deal of healthy questioning going on.)

I've strayed away from the original topic somewhat, but in my defence (!) I was 
hoping to give some insights in response to points raised in the discussion so far. 
That's a way of passing the buck I suppose, so I'll say something about the subject 
of coffins (which wasn't the original question anyway, but hey, I'm easily 
distracted). It does seem like a sad and unappealing image, but as professionals and 
activists in the field, we should acknowledge the sheer lack of awareness out there 
about the decline of minority languages. A coffin is sad, yes, perhaps repulsive, but 
it's also arresting and emotive, which can be useful in grabbing the attention of 
passers-by. I think language professionals, activists, and speakers of endangered 
languages are probably the last people who should have any say in the suitability of 
an exhibit for engaging people who are completely uninitiated; they (we) are at the 
opposite end of the spectrum; we know far too much. For those who know literally 
nothing about the topic, perhaps some clear and stark (even saddening) imagery is the 
best way. Then again perhaps it isn't; I really have no idea, because I'm not 
uninitiated. That's my point. The best measure of the effectiveness and suitability 
of this type of exhibit will be in how it actually engages and fires the imagination 
of people who have never thought about it before. If we really want to engage people, 
we need to meet them at their level, wherever that is.

I hope the exhibit goes well, and that it spurs the interest of the next generation 
in our field :)

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
Visiting Lecturer (2013-14), Dept English, University of Turku, Finland
dave.sayers at cantab.net
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers



On 04/09/2013 15:45, Christian Chiarcos wrote:
> Another idea that came to my mind:
>
> You could describe an example with Cornish. The language flourished before the
> English conquest, then diminished slowly, until, in the late 18th c., it had
> literally withdrawn into a Mousehole, the place where the last speaker died
> (http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/history/people/dolly_pentreath.htm). Few litrary traces
> of Late Cornish, the language of that time, are preserved (more of Middle Cornish),
> but recently, it has been revived (mostly on the basis of related languages such as
> Breton and Welsh, so, its authenticity is somewhat debateable, and a long debate on
> how to reconstruct Cornish has been raging for half a century, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_revival).
>
> So, this language went through the full cycle. For many languages, revitalization
> will be difficult as they are not even substantially documented which is why
> political awareness and support are so important.
>
> Best,
> Christian
>
> On Wed, 04 Sep 2013 14:20:37 +0200, Christian Chiarcos <christian.chiarcos at web.de>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Lena, dear all,
>>
>> I am glad that many of you liked the tree metaphor, and I'm happy that it helped to
>> give the entire discussion a somewhat more constructive tone. Personally, I find
>> other metaphors equally valid (even the coffin, and the phoenix -- although the
>> latter may be somewhat too complex for children at small age). For me, the coffin
>> with "linguistic diversity" on it would be somewhat less offensive, and you could
>> combine it with a globe where the nations of the world are color-coded for, say,
>> their endangered languages per square kilometer to make clear that it is a problem
>> on a global scale. Alternatively, you can generate a map of endangered languages
>> from http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/
>>
>> But regardless of the metaphor you eventually adopt, some ideas on a few specific
>> points you raised:
>>
>> - If you have difficulties to classify languages as being endangered, just take a
>> pragmatic approach and follow a standard reference such as
>> http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/. Their classification may not
>> necessarily be correct, but you don't have to decide by yourself and can redirect
>> all criticism directly to the authors.
>>
>> - Coming back to "Collecting words of different languages for the same
>> concept/object also came to my mind in the first place", you might consider using
>> existing Swadesh lists such as
>> http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?root=new100. Again, their data is far
>> from being perfect (and it's not authoritative, in this case), but you're on safe
>> ground by using data produced by the scientific community. However, AFAIK, there
>> are no audio Swadesh lists available.
>>
>>> 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?
>>
>> - You don't have to provide a classification of all languages and in your context,
>> no one really expects you to, but you can concentrate on representative examples.
>> No need for exhaustivity. If you look for prototypically "healthy" languages, you
>> might adopt, for example, the criterion whether your audience has first-hand
>> experience on them (that's why I was suggesting German and Turkish). The point is
>> that you employ a verifiable, objective criterion (the number of speakers would be
>> another one) from an authoritative source or common knowledge. In this way, any
>> argument about your classification decision should vanish immediately. Maybe,
>> people won't agree, but then, they obviously don't share your definition, and it's
>> a comparison of applies and pies. To be on the safe side, you can add a pointer to
>> a website on language documentation where the problem and its complexity are
>> described in detail. I'm sure people on the list have suggestions for such a link.
>>
>> - I also don't think that it is a good idea to provide a gradual scale (at least
>> not one based on intuition, if you just take the number of speakers, then it should
>> be fine), and in particular, it won't help to distinguish languages that are highly
>> endangered and some that are more in between. There will certainly be a lot of
>> disagreement even on the state and the future of large national languages.
>> Recently, the future of German is controversially discussed again, for example: you
>> might take a look on
>> http://www.heute.de/Sprachpanscher-des-Jahres-Der-Duden-29564858.html for some more
>> or less unjustified controversies. Hence, distinguishing perishing languages and
>> endangered languages would probably not be a good idea. What I was suggesting with
>> the perishing tree (or, more precisely, the treestump) was to enumerate some
>> languages that are lost beyond reconstructability and for which no substantial
>> record, or no record at all is preserved.
>>
>>> 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?
>>
>> - Actually, people might know about the disappearence of dialects in Germany. Maybe
>> not so much in Saxony, but http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/ lists 13
>> languages vulnerable or endangered in (or originating from) Germany alone.
>>
>> - Whatever you do, part of the message should probably be that the loss of
>> linguistic diversity is inseparable from the loss of cultural diversity (or, a
>> symptom at least). Something that I found truly impressing (being a linguist
>> myself) is how different the world is categorized in different languages. With
>> every language we loose, a system of metaphors vanishes that might have held the
>> key for better understanding the world (or, at least, understanding it in a
>> different way). Lera Boroditsky, psychologist at Stanford University, has given a
>> great keynote on this at ACL-2010 (also cf.
>> http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/press/SuddeutscheZeitung.pdf). A nice
>> discussion on a few such aspects, and a source of inspiration may be
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYlVJlmjLEc.
>>
>> All the best, good luck with the exhibition, and thank you for the initiative,
>> Christian
>
>