International Summer School on
Language Documentation and Description

School of Oriental and African Studies, London

22 June - 3 July 2009

Resilience thinking and language endangerment

David Bradley

Resilience thinking is a new approach to the understanding of complex ecological and social interactions and changes, and has so far been applied mainly to the study of ecosystems (Walker & Salt 2006) and community environmental knowledge (Berkes 2008). Resilience is defined as "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure" (Walker & Salt 2006:xiii).

This is also relevant for our response to the processes of change which occur during language shift and language loss. Such changes may be very rapid, and may have extreme effects on the structure and use of the endangered language. Many communities around the world are in or rapidly approaching a tip phase, with drastic changes in language ability, structure and use, as well as the loss of a great deal of other traditional knowledge. A resilience approach, empowering the community and giving it the respect, control and resources to document and use its traditional knowledge and make its own decisions about language, may allow many groups to achieve a new stability in the face of linguistic and cultural globalisation and top-down language policies.

Case studies from the Gong community in Thailand and the Lisu community in China, Burma, Thailand and India will illustrate how this may be achieved. Local initiative, with support from linguists and local authorities, appropriate training and facilitation, and provision of appropriate materials, can stabilise or even reverse an apparently terminal situation.