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

[Susan Penfield]

Jan,
Of course...these are good points and important to mention. Increasingly ,
communities are choosing to do their own work which is great -- but if they
decide to involve a linguist, then that linguist needs to really think
through the relationship with the community -- on many levels. I actually
agree with Scott -- working 'with' is the current model and a good one -- or
at least an improved one. My personal hope is that communities feel
empowered in terms of choosing or not choosing a linguist and in terms of
being able to outline how a linguist might or might not be of specifi use to
them fro either documentation or revitalization.
Best,
Susan


On 1/11/06, Jan Tucker <jtucker at starband.net> wrote:
>
> 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
>



--
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Department of English
Affiliate faculty: Department of Linguistics
and the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program
American Indian Language Development Institute
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20060111/bad7aa60/attachment.htm>