Dr Julia Sallabank

Research Fellow in Language Support and Revitalisation

Julia Sallabank is Research Fellow in Language Support and Revitalisation in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme at SOAS. She has been conducting a sociolinguistic study of Guernsey Norman French since 2000, and gained her doctorate at Lancaster University in 2007. For the previous 16 years she was commissioning editor for applied linguistics and language teaching methodology at Oxford University Press.

Since 2000 Julia has been working with the endangered language community in Guernsey, Channel Islands, and sees full documentation for Guernesiais as a priority. She feels that documentation should focus on the development of corpus-based teaching and learning materials aimed at the community, not solely on preservation by and for linguists.

Julia’s research interests are primarily sociolinguistic. She has become increasingly interested in literacy practices in endangered languages, and their implications for language policy. This is particularly important where the elderly native-speaker base is shrinking and revitalisation depends on motivating the younger generation.

Julia also teaches courses in the BA and MA programme, principally related to sociolinguistics.

Julia studied French and German at Oxford University in 1984 and then worked in translation, development and publishing, completing her MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at the Institute of Education, London University, in 1999 (with distinction).

In March 2007 Julia was invited to present a paper on language policy to the committee of the Guernsey Ministry of Culture and Leisure. The recommendations were accepted and published in the first official 'Guernsey French Strategy 2007-2012' by the Culture and Leisure Department. She also wrote the contribution on Guernesiais for the BBC Voices website on languages of the British Isles.

She has presented papers at several conferences including the German Linguistics Association, the British and American Associations for Applied Linguistics, and the Association Internationale des Langues Appliquées.

Selected publications

2006
‘Guernsey French , identity and language endangerment’ in The Sociolinguistics of Identity edited by Tope Ominiyi and Goodith White. London: Continuum.

‘Prospects for linguistic diversity in Europe and beyond: views from a small island.’ In Reconfiguring Europe: The Contribution of Applied Linguistics, edited by Constant Leung and Jennifer Jenkins. London: Equinox Publishing.

2005
‘Prestige from the bottom up: A review of language planning in Guernsey’.
Current Issues in Language Planning 6/1: 44–63.

2003
“It won’t be the Guernsey French we know”: identity issues and language endangerment.’ Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 7.

2002
‘Writing in an unwritten language: The case of Guernsey French’. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 6.

Publications in process:

‘A personal construct approach to researching language attitudes in the island of Guernsey and the Republic of Ireland’ with Goodith White

‘Literacy practices and standardisation debates’

On-line publications

2004
Sallabank, Julia. 2005. Multilingual nation: Guernesiais. BBC Voices. http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/guernesiais.shtml