Language Documentation in the Tanzanian Rift: Between Knowledge Construction and Language Work

Gorwaa is a Cushitic language spoken in north-central Tanzania, in an area often referred to as the Tanzanian Rift (Kießling, Mous, and Nurse 2008). Factors such as rapid social change, demographic shifts, as well as language attitudes affected by larger hegemonic discourse contribute to Gorwaa’s status as an endangered language (Harvey 2019).

While African languages, on average, are less documented and less described than the rest of the world, the languages of the Tanzanian Rift possess a level of description that is higher than most other areas on the African continent (Hammarström 2022). This is a result of a confluence of activity, including that of individuals associated with colonisation (e.g. Johnson 1923), with faith-based work (e.g. Olson 1964, Eaton 2008), and with academic institutions (e.g. Mous 1993, Kießling 1994, Griscom 2019), as well as “native informants”, “language consultants”, and “helpers”: the number of whom is unknowable, but whose contributions were the sine qua non of all the works cited above. In a contemporary context in which the documentation and description of minority languages is a central desideratum for both linguistics and humanity at large, the process of how the diverse languages of the Tanzanian Rift came to be described to the degree that they are is valuable.

This talk is an initial attempt at understanding this process, and focuses on this final group of actors – the local contributors to language documentation and description – because it is these actors whose voices are often silent. Specifically, this talk will center the experiences of four Gorwaa speakers – local researchers – who, as part of research convened by the author (e.g. Harvey 2017, 2018, and 2019), have been engaged in language work (Leonard 2021) for almost a decade. We will accomplish this through: 1) chronicling the work carried out by the Gorwaa local researchers during the language documentation project; 2) identify how their role in the project has contributed invaluable insight into our understanding of the language; and 3) reflect on how they conceptualise language documentation and the ends to which such a documentation must be put.