Front Matter

Editor's Preface and List of Contributors (LDD 8)

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Abstract

This special issue of Language Documentation and Description derives from presentations at the 2009 World Oral Literature Project Workshop, held on 15 and 16 December at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. The contributions published here represent seven of the sixteen papers presented at the workshop, along with an additional paper by Roger Blench and Fredeliza Campos, whose fieldwork was funded by the World Oral Literature Project. Taken as a whole, this volume addresses some of the theoretical and practical issues related to the collection, recording, preservation and dissemination of oral literature by taking the conversation held at the workshop to a wider and more varied audience. For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. Moreover, these creative works are an invaluable part of a community’s heritage that may be threatened when their mother tongue becomes endangered or even lost when a language dies out, as such traditions are often left untranslated when a community switches to speaking a more dominant language.

How to Cite:

Gunn, I. & Turin, M., (2010) “Editor's Preface and List of Contributors (LDD 8)”, Language Documentation and Description 8, 5-12. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd212