Language Documentation Technologies and Methodologies Workshop for the American Anthropological Association Meeting

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

The documentation and description of indigenous languages has its early roots in anthropology, especially in linguistic anthropology, where founders of the field such as Edward Sapir and Franz Boas advocated collecting data in Native American and other indigenous languages in order to examine their linguistic features and cultural components. However, since the establishment of linguistics as a separate academic field in the last century, the majority of work focusing on the documentation and description of these languages has been produced by linguists. This is especially true for the technological and methodological components of language-centered documentation research. Language documentation in indigenous and endangered language communities and related research increasingly requires specialized skills at each stage of research: development, collection, analysis, and archiving. Yet, universities do not uniformly offer methods courses covering these skills for students. To address this gap, this project will result in a workshop targeting anthropologists with introductory training in the specialized skills and methodologies necessary for language documentation in Indigenous and endangered language communities at each stage of research: development, collection, analysis, and archiving. Broader impacts include the training of graduate students, non-academic anthropologists, members of underrepresented groups in language documentation and data management, the public availability of workshop training materials, and a wider dissemination of practices designed to foster best practices for public access to data, including an understanding of contexts when wider access may not be appropriate. Led by two early career researchers, the proposed "Language Documentation Technologies and Methodologies Workshop," will bring contemporary documentation methodologies and experienced instructors from the Institute on Collaborative Language Research, or CoLang, to offer this training at the 2017 American Anthropological Association (AAA) meeting. With an annual attendance of six to seven thousand, the AAA meeting provides a number of benefits as a location for training in the field of endangered language documentation and description. It has scholars at all stages of their careers from early graduate students to full professors. Critically, it also includes non-academically affiliated community members, practicing and applied anthropologists, and instructors from a wide range of US and international institutions including tribal and community colleges, and minority serving universities. Potential participants in the workshop represent a very wide range of ethno-racial, political, and socio-economic backgrounds, and the workshop will facilitate training not only to students and faculty in anthropological fields, but also as to the teachers and mentors of students learning to do research in an expansive network of educational institutions. Anthropology's commitment to in situ ethnographic methods of research and long-term relationships with communities participating in research makes anthropologists prime candidates for indigenous or endangered language documentation. While ethnographic research has produced, and continues to produce massive amounts of data within endangered language communities, long-term archiving and dimensions of academic and community access to those collected data are rarely discussed during academic training. Training in contemporary methodologies ensures the use of best practices in ethical models and higher quality fieldwork materials, which serves the greater scientific community and the general public.