[lg policy] Fwd: [LINGANTH] AAA panel on Dialect

[Harold Schiffman]

Forwarded From: LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org


Dear Linganth Members,

Edwin Everhart and I are organizing a panel for the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting
on dialects (i.e. non-standard language varieties that are closely related
to and/or mutually intelligible with a standard language variety). See our
draft session abstract, below.

Our research is in northern Japan and the Shetland Isles, respectively, and
we welcome other regional specializations. Please submit 250-word abstracts
to both Edwin Everhart (eke at ucla.edu) and Alexander Thomson (
athomson1990 at hotmail.com) by April 11th.

Thank you for considering this topic!

Alexander Thomson
UCLA Department of Anthroplogy


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Organized by Edwin Everhart and Alexander Thomson, UCLA Department of
Anthropology

Linguistic anthropologists have reached a general consensus that beliefs
and feelings about language – along with metalinguistic activity – broadly
determine the status of a language variety, and ultimately, its very
survival. While this analysis has been profitably applied to the relations
between clearly distinct languages, e.g. Shoshoni and English, the question
of relations between closely-related language varieties has been largely
left to other fields. To begin to remedy this lacuna, we propose a panel on
dialects – in other words, non-standard language varieties that are closely
related to and/or mutually intelligible with a standard language variety.

Minority languages may be marginalized, but when they are sufficiently
different from the standard, it is at least possible to argue for their
valorization on account of their distinctiveness. Dialects, whether defined
by regional origin or other social measures, are frequently perceived as
merely corrupted versions of a standard language variety. Paradoxically,
their very similarity to standard languages often makes them difficult to
valorize in their own right. Meanwhile, discrimination on the basis of
dialect affects a vast number of people, and arguably amounts to a moral
threat. In many cases, speakers of marginalized dialects have taken the
initiative in raising the status of their language. This panel will address
these efforts at status-raising, whether through corpus preservation,
revitalization activism, or some other means. In keeping with this year’s
theme, our panel will engage with the ethical obligations that we bear in a
world full of dialect variation, but widespread erasure of the legitimacy
or even existence of dialects.

Given that anthropologists are now interacting with more and more diverse
publics, we must rethink the manner in which we reach out to these groups.
This onus weighs especially heavily on sociocultural and linguistic
anthropologists because our causes, subjects and sites are firmly rooted in
the here and now. That is to say, the actions we take now often shape the
“emerging future” of the languages and dialects with which we work. In
recognition of this fact, we intend this panel to be a discussion and
exposition of problems inherent to meta-dialect activism, including folk
ideologies held by politicians, activists and other parties. We also intend
this panel to be programmatic insofar as we will discuss strategies that
might be fruitfully employed to reach these diverse publics, rendering our
work accessible, intelligible and significant to them. Sub-themes include
an analysis of contemporary language revitalization projects and
governmental policies pertaining to dialect.



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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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