ELAP Alumni

Former MA student: Elisabetta Piomarta

Before applying to enrol in an MA course at SOAS in 2007 I had never considered studying about Endangered Languages, but rather was thinking of doing straight Linguistics or Modern Chinese Studies. It was Dr Friederike Luepke who drew my attention to the fact that I could have both linguistics training and an opportunity to expand my vision of issues connected to China by considering the MA in Language Documentation and Description. She argued that my previous extensive travelling experience in China, as well as elsewhere in Asia, and my overall interest in languages made it a sensible choice.  As it turned out, within the MA, all my coursework essays centred on languages of China, and my dissertation focused on trilingualism in Hong Kong before and after the 1997 handover.

I have always been rather mobile in life, and as I have not been able to muster enough commitment to a PhD that would keep me tied up for the better part of four years, I decided to grant myself something like a fieldwork period without the fieldwork proper. I am currently at the University of Tibet in Lhasa taking the Tibetan Language Course for Foreign Students, which is allowing me to reapproach my original interest in sociolinguistics.  Being fascinated by the language dynamics that develop within a complex society, I am currently reading about code-switching, unbalanced bilingualism, and language endangerment in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, examples of which are unfortunately before my very ears every day here in Lhasa.

Prior to this period in Tibet I had opted to put my language skills and linguistics training to use for other language learners, and was granted a placement on the Modern Foreign Languages Post-Graduate Certificate of Education for secondary schools at the University of Oxford. At the moment I stand at a crossroads, not having yet decided whether to focus on teaching from this coming Autumn or to pursue the option, proposed by a personal contact, of leading tour groups in India, and possibly elsewhere in Asia.