Recalibrating Documentation: Reflections on 10 years of language documentation in the Tanzanian Rift

Language documentation has had a major impact on the trajectory of linguistics since the turn of the century, both in terms of what is considered linguistic data, as well as how that data is collected and used. Taking my work - 10 years of documentation in the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area - as a case study, this talk reflects on how my practice has been shaped by language documentation discourse, as well as how the local context has shaped how I do language documentation. Three central topics to be explored include the effect of a documentary approach on grammatical description, the emergence of literary genres from documentary materials, as well as the potential language documentation has for supporting the narrative sovereignty of marginalised speaker communities. Finally, the talk will provide some assessment on the future(s) of language documentation on the continent, and what language documentation in Africa must become to ultimately succeed. At the same time, the talk explores what collaboration can look like, actively pushing back against the idea of this work being the top-down pursuit of a "lone wolf" linguist. Examples will be provided as rich audiovisual material throughout, drawing on the verbal arts of the Gorwaa, Ihanzu, and Hadzabe people.