Ancestral languages and (imagined) creolization ...
It is sometimes argued that the language of certain indigenous communities in North America and Australia is no longer the ancestral language, but ‘Indian English’ or ‘Eskimo English’ or ‘Aboriginal English.’ But are these stable, persistent, emblems of community identity, hence ‘languages’ just lik...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Language Documentation and Description
2014
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.25894/ldd284 https://www.lddjournal.org/article/id/1052/ |
| Summary: | It is sometimes argued that the language of certain indigenous communities in North America and Australia is no longer the ancestral language, but ‘Indian English’ or ‘Eskimo English’ or ‘Aboriginal English.’ But are these stable, persistent, emblems of community identity, hence ‘languages’ just like English, Navajo, Yupik, or Warlpiri, or are they just transient phenomena, noticeable perhaps to standard-English speakers but lacking in linguistic and sociolinguistic ‘focus’ (LePage and Tabouret-Keller, 1985)? It is a question that really matters when communities and linguists must decide whether to document, teach, and promote these languages alongside, or even in preference to, the ancestral language. In this paper, I want to discuss the question of just what to document in your own, or somebody else’s community, proposing a series of alternative documentation models and their implications for local and wider communities. Documentary linguistics brings people with different agendas together over the ... : Language Documentation and Description, Vol. 3 (2005) ... |
|---|