International Summer School on
Language Documentation and Description

School of Oriental and African Studies, London

22 June - 3 July 2009

Communities and ethics

This lecture will examine the kinds of linguistic communities of endangered languages one might encounter, from easily identifiable ones to those diffuse and more or less mobilized, and will address the notions of linguistic community vs. community of speakers. Issues of ethics will be presented in terms of the common types of project underway (description-documentation and revitalization) and the danger of possibly too much pressure on junior linguists.