LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES (fwd abstract)

[phil cash cash]

Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 33:  21-45  (Volume publication date October 2004)

LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES: Cultures of Electronic
Mediation and the Refiguring of Communities

Patrick Eisenlohr

Department of Anthropology, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri
63130

Abstract 
Recently, language activists and linguists have begun using new
technologies in projects aimed at revitalizing the practice of
lesser-used languages. This review explores related work, emphasizing
how practices of electronic mediation enabled by such technologies both
shape and are informed by linguistic ideologies, which in turn
crucially influence the possible revived use or abandonment of
linguistic varieties. New technologies are treated as part of cultures
of electronic mediation, connecting sociocultural valuations to
mediated discourse. Their use often has important political
implications, given that projects of language revitalization are often
linked to claims of ethnolinguistic recognition. Finally, because
documentation of lesser-used languages using digital technologies also
results in the production of new cultural objects to be stored,
displayed, and circulated, attention is also focused on the forms of
sociality sustained by the creation and exchange of such electronic
artifacts.