"In", "for", or "with"? (was Re: [ILAT] LSA 2006)

[Jan Tucker]

Scott, great points here. It would be good to hear from community members
regarding working "for" the community. How do the communities want
"outsiders"
 working "for" them. Also, do the communities even want outside
collaborators in
their revitalization programs? Would they rather train their own community
members
 working on revitalization to document language and develop language
revitalization tools?

Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
[mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Scott DeLancey
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:48 AM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: [ILAT] "In", "for", or "with"? (was Re: [ILAT] LSA 2006)


On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Susan Penfield wrote:

> Jeff's session) is supportive of the community's efforts. This requires a
> second set of 'Best Practices' -- still being defined -- for working with
> communties (actually, I think we should think in terms of working FOR
> communities --a step beyond working 'IN' or even 'WITH' ) ...

I may be splitting hairs here, but then, that's what I do for a living ...

A lot of folks in linguistics now put these in the other order--once upon
a time we worked *in* the communities, then we learned we had to think
about working *for* the community, now we work *with* them.

To me the difference is:  if you are working *for* the community, that
sounds like you design and carry out the project, and the community
benefits.  Sounds cool, but it can't work that way--no revitalization
program can get anywhere unless the community is involved all the way
along, not just in goal-setting but in implementation too--if you're
not working *with* the community then the community isn't going to end
up getting much out of your work.

Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
1290 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA

delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html