Blog Post II: Senior Thesis, Where Museum Studies and Linguistics Collide

For my senior thesis project, I want to combine my interests in linguistics and museum studies. For as long as I can remember, I have always been intrigued by language, both from a linguistic perspective and from a writer's perspective. Since sixth grade, I've been studying Spanish, and it is my immersion here at RIT. I also have a minor in Language Science. One topic touched upon in my classes is endangered languages. There are approximately 6,900 distinct languages in the world, and around half of them are in danger of dying. One film we watched, titled The Linguists, follows two linguists on their journey documenting a few of these languages, and I would recommend it to anyone interested. An example I can give of an endangered language is Scottish Gaelic, a language that I am trying to learn online because of my family heritage and because of its threatened status. I've known of Scottish Gaelic since middle school because my aunt gifted me and my sister a MacLaren crest necklace, one that I often wear and get asked about. On it is written Creag an Tuirc, which means "The Boar's Rock" in Scottish Gaelic. For my thesis, I will probably focus on Scottish Gaelic as a case study. Overall, language preservation is vital because language is a cornerstone of society and culture. Given that museums are cultural institutions that dedicate themselves to preservation and education, I wondered just how museums and archives could help the language preservation effort. Language is essential in the telling of stories and in the safeguarding of tradition and culture, as we see with oral history. Therefore, although museum studies and linguistics may initially seem like disparate subjects, they aren't. Historical linguists may consult old transcripts, documents, and writing systems that are part of museum collections, for example. In summary, the goal of my thesis is to explore the places where museums and linguistics intersect, and how they can work together to help protect the world's endangered languages. I want to introduce the new perspective of preserving language, not just artifact.

This is a screenshot from The Endangered Languages Project, and I clicked on Scottish Gaelic as an example. They provide the language's status and number of speakers.