Ancestral languages and (imagined) creolization
- Anthony C. Woodbury
Abstract
It is sometimes argued that the language of certain indigenous communities in North America and Australia is no longer the ancestral language, but ‘Indian English’ or ‘Eskimo English’ or ‘Aboriginal English.’ But are these stable, persistent, emblems of community identity, hence ‘languages’ just like English, Navajo, Yupik, or Warlpiri, or are they just transient phenomena, noticeable perhaps to standard-English speakers but lacking in linguistic and sociolinguistic ‘focus’ (LePage and Tabouret-Keller, 1985)? It is a question that really matters when communities and linguists must decide whether to document, teach, and promote these languages alongside, or even in preference to, the ancestral language.
In this paper, I want to discuss the question of just what to document in your own, or somebody else’s community, proposing a series of alternative documentation models and their implications for local and wider communities. Documentary linguistics brings people with different agendas together over the recording and analysis of speech. But for it to work, it is crucial to be aware of and respect the agendas of different stakeholders, and to understand the (often tacit) ideologies that underlie them.
Keywords: indigenous languages, endangered languages, ancestral languages, metropolitan languages, creolization, documentary linguistics, documentation models, priorities, ideology
How to Cite:
Woodbury, A., (2005) “Ancestral languages and (imagined) creolization”, Language Documentation and Description 3, 252-262. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd284
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