Show a list of all papers
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01: Colonial grievances info | papers
02: Reshaping Indigenous worlds info | papers
03: Dynamics of Pacific Religiosity info | papers
04: Mapping Oceania info | papers
05: Rethinking political conflicts, beyond ethnicity info | papers
06: Cultural festivals info | papers
07: Enchantments of technology info | papers
08: Ownership in effect info | papers
09: Spiritual material info | papers
10: Endangered Languages info | papers
11: Transculturation info | papers
12: New Caledonia in Oceania info | papers
13: Keynotes info | papers
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| id: | 10 |
| Title: | Endangered languages - endangered cultures |
| Number of papers: | 16 |
| Organizers: | Salaün, Marie
(University of Paris-V, France)
Senft, Gunter
(Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen, the Netherlands) |
| Abstract: | Of the approximately 6,000 languages of the world 4,000 can be considered to be endangered. Both anthropologists and linguists have excellent arguments to argue that there is no plausibility in the view ‘the fewer languages the better’. On the contrary, we all should care if a language dies because – as anthropologists and linguists have clearly pointed out and known for a long time – languages express identity, are repositories of history, and contribute to the sum of human knowledge. Many of these endangered languages are spoken in the Pacific – and most of them have not been documented yet. In this panel we would like to discuss the cultural implications of language change in the Pacific in general and language death and concepts of, and conflicts with, language documentation and revitalization programmes for the various cultures in the Pacific in particular.
Keywords: language change/culture change; language death/loss of culture; language loss as yet another effect of globalization; language documentation and intellectual copyright issues; language revitalization programmes as political (hotly debated and sometimes risky) acts; the role of anthropologists, linguists and the affected speech community/ethnical group in documentation and revitalization programmes. |
