Rethinking the Language of Language Endangerment

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.

The text and slides for this talk are available at these (non-permanent) links: 
Text: https://tinyurl.com/4t6274wj
Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/GeraldRoche1/rethinking-the-language-of-language-endangerment

SOAS Linguistics Webinars
February 24, 2021

Gerald Roche (La Trobe University)

The year 2022 will bring both an important anniversary and a new beginning. It will be the 30th anniversary of a collection of articles in the journal Language that helped consolidate and popularize the field of endangerment linguistics. And, it will also be the first year of the United Nations Decade of Indigenous Languages. This presentation will examine the intersection of these two events, in order to think through how linguists can contribute to the goals of the upcoming decade, and how they can make positive interventions in the ongoing crisis of linguistic diversity around the world more generally. I will argue that a meaningful engagement in the UN Decade, and in support of languages more broadly, will require a critical re-examination of the precedents established 30 years ago, and of the impacts that endangerment linguistics has had. In particular, I will focus on endangerment linguistics as a discourse, rather than a field of practice. I want to suggest that as a discourse, endangerment linguistics has had harmful, though largely unintended, effects that work against the aims and practices of the field. I will describe these harms and how they are produced, and discuss options for dismantling and replacing language endangerment discourses, while maintaining some of the practices and goals of the field  I will also suggest that this rethinking of endangerment discourses will require sustained and good faith interdisciplinary dialog. As an anthropologist researching the intersections of race, colonialism, and language oppression, I will point out where I think some of those conversations could happen.