Public Lecture: Colette Grinevald

"Globalization and language endangerment:
poison and antidote"

Historical meeting on Rama Cay! Reading dictionary entries to Rama speakers. Rama speakers (from left to right): Walter Ortiz, Ambrosh (Ruben's brother), Colette, Cristina (Miss Nora's cousin), Miss Nora Rigby, Amalia (Miss Nora's niece)

Abstract

One of the effects of globalization is accelerated and massive language shift that is contributing to the endangerment of up to 90% of the languages of the world. Understanding the dynamics of this process, their economic as well as ideological nature, and dealing with deterministic and alarmist attitudes are part of what linguists working on endangered languages and with endangered language communities need to deal with. But if globalization has a dark side, it also provides to a certain extent some of its own antidotes, as will be illustrated with two revitalization projects. The example of Jakaltek Popti', a newly endangered Mayan language of Guatemala, talks of the appropriation of new technologies by Mayan people in their search for a traditional but modern identity. The example of the Rama language of Nicaragua, an almost extinct language recently given a chance for a new breath of air, illustrates another aspect of globalization, namely the development of a new network society that creates open and flexible forms of identity and relies on the empowerment of key individuals with vision and determination without whom no revitalization project would happen.

Colette Grinevald

Colette Grinevald, is a world-renowned fieldworker whose specialization is the description of Latin American languages. She has been a staunch advocate of community roles in linguistic work. She began her work in the early 1970s on a Mayan language of Guatemala, and has since worked on documentation and revitalisation projects in Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador, and has trained linguists in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and Brazil. The dangerous political environments of many of the peoples she has worked with have shaped her fieldwork experiences.

Selected publications:

2003. Speakers and documentation of endangered languages. In P. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description Volume One. SOAS. pp. 52-72

1998. Language Endangerment in South America: A Programmatic Approach. In L. Grenoble & L. Whaley (eds) Endangered Languages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 124-160

1997. Language Contact and Language Degeneration. In F. Coulmas (ed.) Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Blackwell. pp. 257-270.

1992. Language Shift and Language Death: The case of Rama in Nicaragua, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 93. pp. 11-26

Event Details

This lecture was attended by a large audience at SOAS on 11th February 2005.