Spring Semester Begins

I can't believe we're already approaching week 3! With school back in full swing, I've been doing a lot of research on the preservation of the Scottish Gaelic language and trying to uncover case studies in which cultural institutions in Scotland contribute to the language's preservation and revitalization. As I've mentioned, I decided to focus on Scottish Gaelic for my research, rather than doing all three (Scottish Gaelic, Irish, and Welsh). The reasoning behind this is to focus my research and delve in deep without overwhelming myself, especially given the thesis deadlines and how fast the semester will go by. I spent my winter break gathering preliminary sources on Scottish Gaelic, and now I'm working on reading through them and refining my searches.

As I look ahead, I believe my challenge will be trying to define success in order to propose suggestions for how museums can preserve and revitalize endangered languages. Because this seems to be a relatively new area of study (the intersection of cultural institutions and endangered languages), the possibilities are exciting, but it also makes it difficult to evaluate shortcomings and successes. For example, there are language policies that have been enacted within the past couple years. But, if success were to be hypothetically based on number of speakers, you'd have to wait for the next generation to grow up to see if they're passing on the language to their children and compare that to the number of speakers before the language policies were put in place. Or, I could base success on something more in the moment, like visitor engagement in cultural institutions with bilingual signage, for example.

I'm keeping all of this in the back of my mind as I research. I'm hoping that the more I read and find case studies the clearer this will become. I am also considering reaching out to museums to inquire about more information on Scottish Gaelic from their viewpoints of actually interacting with the public in Scotland.

Blog Post VII: Winter Break Plans

I plan on taking full advantage of the break and first giving myself some time to rest and relax. Allowing myself some time away from my thesis will be beneficial I think because I can then return to it with fresh eyes and ideas. After the holiday, during the second half of the break, I plan on doing some more reading and seeing if I can ascertain whether I need to focus on one language for my case study (Scottish Gaelic, Irish, or Welsh) or if it’s feasible to do all three. If I can figure this out, or at least begin to, over break by looking at some initial resources then I can jump right in during spring semester. And of course I’ll be working on my literature review after receiving feedback from my advisers so that I can get in the revised version for them to sign.

Overall, I’m just really looking forward to going home and seeing my family (and my dog!). It’ll be nice to be able to just focus on thesis without the assignments/projects/tests of other classes. I will be able to allocate more time to my research in this way and also get some new perspectives from my family who will be curious about my thesis.

I can’t believe we’re halfway through our senior year!

Here's a cute picture of my dog to help ease the stress of these last few days of the semester!

Blog Post VI: From Conceptualization to Fruition

The main topic of my thesis has remained the same, but throughout the past few weeks, I’ve gained more clarity on how to approach my research project. At the beginning, I knew I wanted to focus on endangered languages in the United Kingdom and Ireland for the case studies of the main body of my thesis. Therefore, I wasn’t quite sure what case studies or examples to discuss in my literature review without being redundant. I decided to just do some general research on language preservation and revitalization as a general subject/area of study. Ultimately, this ended up being a successful strategy because I found some great core readings on the subject which helped shape my lit review. A couple of my sources were written by linguist Leanne Hinton, who mentioned a few workshops here in the U.S. involving Native American tribes and museum institutions, which I discuss in Blog Post V. I had heard of these before in my own personal research during the past year, so I thought it would be great to discuss them as examples of current museums efforts in the U.S. which will set up a nice segway into a discussion comparing and contrasting them to my case studies in the U.K. Furthermore, I’ve been inspired by one of my linguistics classes, Evolving English Language, to include a section about the spread of English and how it affects other languages. Overall, not overthinking or narrowing my initial research and keeping my mind open have really helped my process.

I can see my thesis evolving quite a bit as I uncover how much information there is about Celtic languages (Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Welsh). If there ends up being a lot of information to work with (concerning policy, community programs, museum efforts) I may end up just focusing on one of the languages and delving in deep. If there is not a significant amount of information, I will have to figure out how to best survey language preservation and revitalization efforts. However it ends up, I’m excited to see how cultural institutions can help and hopefully present some novel ideas and methods to both fields (museums/linguistics).

This is a diagram I found after searching in Google "Celtic Languages." The map, from the Brilliant Maps site, is helpful to situate oneself as to where the languages in my case studies are mainly located. It also includes some statistics, although they are not cited.

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.