Spring Semester Update #2

As always, I'm still moving forward with my research. For our first deadline of eight pages, I decided to research and write about important Scottish Gaelic policies given that I'll be referencing them throughout my paper. In addition, I included some useful statistics from a study that examined how many people know/speak Gaelic, their public perception of it, and its ties to cultural identity. Next, I began writing on the National Library of Scotland for my first case study because I was interested in their digitization efforts that are making rare Gaelic text and literature available online.

Currently, I'm looking into preservation and revitalization efforts in school and in community organizations. For example, I'm reading about Gaelic Medium Education, which allows children as early as preschool age all the way up to secondary school to learn in Gaelic. In terms of community organizations, there are quite a few that offer online resources to families and parents. As I research more about this, I feel like it's a nice tie-in to the Library's digitization efforts. With all of this combined, I might include a section just dedicated to the digital and how modern preservation and revitalization efforts can be undertaken through online means. For instance, besides the Library, are other museums and cultural institutions connecting with their audiences online? Are they doing things such as bilingual social media posts? For our next deadline, I also want to finish my introduction. Hopefully by that point I'll have most of my research done so I can have a better idea of how to summarize my paper and pinpoint the thesis statement.

Peer review last week was very helpful. It's always nice to have a fresh pair of eyes to catch weird wording/typos. It was also helpful just to see how my group members decided to go about organizing their ideas. It's exciting seeing everyone's progress!

Blog Post V: Learning Along the Way

For my literature review, I am defining language preservation and revitalization as a movement and looking at both its accomplishments and its shortcomings. An overview of the field is necessary before delving into the relationship between museums and linguistics, so readers will have a better understanding of how and why languages become endangered and what linguists are currently doing to remedy this. In addition, by exploring the past and current works of linguists, I can see where there are gaps and how these gaps can potentially be filled by cultural institutions. For example, I have learned that “recordings of natural conversation, rules of address politeness, turn-taking, and other discourse aspects of endangered languages are few and far between” (1). Given that oral histories are an important archival resource, museums and archives can be great places to store recordings of conversation and culturally important stories/folktales that will assist language revitalization. In addition, linguist Hinton points out that “linguistic documentation that assists revitalization must be user-friendly for the community and oriented toward language education” (2). The idea of being user-friendly and for the community directly aligns with the missions of museums. Cultural institutions are all about accessibility, and data accumulated by linguists must be usable and understandable to people who aren’t linguists in order to make use of them in their communities.

Furthermore, I am learning about what organizations are currently doing in the United States to contribute to the language revitalization effort. As I’ve mentioned in Blog Post IV, there is the National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages, which provides endangered language communities access to language archives with the goal of recovering and reviving their languages. I previously thought that this was the only program, but it is actually one of many, just sharing the name and general goal. It is modeled after the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous California Languages, hosted by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and the University of California, Berkeley. Moving forward, I still need to know what efforts are being done in Ireland and in the United Kingdom as I will be focusing on the Celtic languages for the main case study of my thesis. I’ve found some great potential resources on language policy and revitalization efforts for the Celtic languages which I will focus on after finishing my literature review.

Lastly, one other interesting thing I’ve learned about through my Evolving English Language class and through one of my thesis resources is the debate surrounding the spread of English. Minority languages can become endangered as a majority language, like English, is favored and learned. Many people, like Jay Walker who gave a Ted Talk called “The World’s English Mania,” see the spread of English as a good thing, as it paves the way for what Walker claims as “a future where the world has a common language to solve its common problems.” I’m interested to learn more about the pros and cons of a world common language and how it might affect lesser spoken languages.

Screenshot from the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous California Languages, highlighting some of the services offered. Hinton's name is also mentioned, as she is an important figure in language revitalization and whose journal articles I am referencing in my literature review.

Notes:

(1) Leanne Hinton, “Language Revitalization,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23, (2003): 46.

(2) Hinton, 54.

Blog Post IV: Senior Thesis Project and Working Research Question

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my thesis is going to explore the ways in which museums and archives can contribute to language preservation and revitalization efforts. I believe museums and archives have a great potential to help for a variety of reasons. First, museums are tasked with being the repositories that preserve, educate, and spread awareness of different cultures, groups, movements, individuals, and more. Language is a central component of culture and tradition, and it can therefore potentially tie in with a museum’s mission. Furthermore, taking the time to highlight the importance of language will be key so that my audience/readers are invested and have a reason to care. Second, there are many challenges with teaching endangered languages compared to majority languages. There are limited speakers, most of whom may be elderly, and they aren’t trained in education. Most linguists aren’t, either. Therefore, museums and archives can be that means of supporting endangered languages and educating the general public about them beyond the classroom. Third, cultural institutions already have a great basis for contributing to these efforts. In many collections, there are oral histories, old manuscripts, and other materials that could be of use to the preservation and revitalization of languages. Museums and archives can curate exhibitions or promote programs to make use of these materials. One example is The National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages, which is a two-week long workshop where native community members from across the country come together in Washington, D.C. to research documents relating to their languages and cultures. The members are partnered with professional linguists and “navigate Smithsonian and Library of Congress archives and collections, locate and acquire documents, interpret writing systems, and transform archival materials into practical lessons for language learning” [1]. I get excited thinking about the possibilities when uncovering the efforts of museums in language revitalization. I plan on researching more about language preservation and revitalization from a linguistic perspective, other current connections to museums, and then suggesting methods for the future.

This screenshot from The National Breath of Life's page highlights the mission and includes a quote from a participant that demonstrates the positive impact projects like this have.

With all of this in mind, my working research question is: Given the missions of cultural institutions (e.g. museums, archives), their collections, and their relationships with surrounding communities, how can these institutions successfully contribute to the preservation and revitalization of endangered languages in the long-term, and how can success be evaluated? The question aims to encompass both linguistic and museum perspectives, to consider current cases while maintaining a vision for the future, and to captivate readers and encourage them to learn more about endangered languages.

Source:

[1] “About the Workshop.” National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages, 2017. 

Blog Post III: The Merit of Close Reading

I am very excited to begin researching for my thesis topic (the potential role of museums and archives in language preservation). I have looked up information these past few years on endangered languages and their revitalization efforts out of personal curiosity and for various projects. But, I look forward to continuing this research on a much deeper level and with the close reading skills emphasized in Research Methods.This semester, as we approach our readings with specific questions (what is the research question? methodologies? evidence? etc), I have been more cognizant of the methods I was already utilizing when conducting close readings. Throughout the years of being in school, I have been trained to search for an author’s argument or thesis, his/her main supporting points, and conclusion. Therefore, it is neat to now be more aware or mindful of the physical setup of a paper in addition to the content. For instance, it is interesting to compare the structures of all the articles we read, and how the structure helps convey an author’s argument, or muddles it. For Museum Studies in particular, the structure seems to be more open-ended compared to the strict layout of a biology lab report, for example. Overall, I’ve enjoyed using the strategies I’ve already learned in combination with new ones and looking at how a reading’s content and layout complement each other to serve an author’s purpose.

The two journal articles I read related to language preservation and endangered languages had both similar and different structures. The first is titled, "Endangered Languages, Endangered Knowledge" by Luisa Maffi. Based on the title, I figured the article would delve into the consequences of losing languages with specific case studies. Maffi did emphasize the risks of losing languages, but she spoke about it in broader terms, relating linguistic diversity to biodiversity. She established an analogy between "conservation linguistics" and "conservation biology" [1] to convey to readers the importance of an interdisciplinary approach. The article was written in 2002, shortly after the emergence of language preservation as a priority in the 1990s, so Maffi considers how the field could grow to be most successful. Similarly, in "Language Revitalization and Language Pedagogy: New Teaching and Learning Strategies," Leanne Hinton takes a compare and contrast approach. She defines four types of languages: foreign, majority, heritage, and endangered languages. She outlines the primary goals of their teaching programs, learner's motives, and influence on language to demonstrate how the curricula and teaching methods for majority languages (such as Spanish or English) cannot be easily applied to endangered languages. In the case of endangered languages, there are challenges like lack of fluent teachers and lack of resources in small communities. Therefore, "communities, families and individuals are creating new and unique strategies all the time to bring their endangered languages back into use" [2]. One example is Twf (as referred to by Hinton), an organization in Wales promoting family and parent programs with the aim of introducing Welsh into the home. Hinton's article structure is different from Maffi in that it has clearer transitions with headings and subheadings, and a separate abstract, introduction, body, and conclusion.

Here is a screenshot from the Welsh program discussed by Hinton. They highlight their long-term goal of one million Welsh speakers by 2050. 

Notes:
[1] Luisa Maffi, “Endangered languages, endangered knowledge,” International Social Science Journal, Vol. 54, No. 173 (2002): page 387. Wiley Online Library.
[2] Leanne Hinton, “Language revitalization and language pedagogy: new teaching and learning strategies,” Language and Education, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2011): page 317. EBSCOhost.

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.