The fourth 3L (Lyon, London, Leiden) International Summer school, entitled “Endangered Languages – from Documentation to Revitalisation” took place between 1-13 July 2012 in Lyon, France, and explored the new developments that have been occurring in the field of language endangerment over the past twenty years. It was organised by the members of the Langues En Danger-Terrain, Documentation, Revitalisation (LED-TDR) team, who belong to the DDL and ICAR CNRS laboratories.
The videos of the LED TDR line of investigation launching event and the videos from the first (2008) Lyon summer school are available here :
The videos below are those of the plenary talks that were given by world-class specialists (program). Those talks address different possible definitions and approaches to endangered language revitalisation (L. Grenoble), documentation and archiving (F. Ameka, D. Nathan), as well as the connection between literacy and revitalisation (S. Pérez López). J. Martin discusses the case of Francoprovençal, a threatened language of the Lyon region in France. S. Mufene connects issues of language endangerment with wider language ecologies.
The summer school was trilingual (English, French, Spanish) and the talks are in one of those languages. Each presentation is accompanied by a PowerPoint document (which in turn may also be in another language). We advise you to open the PowerPoint document or to print it out so that you may follow the slides while watching the videos.
Lenore GRENOBLE (University of Chicago). Revitalization: definitions and approaches
In her conference, Lenore Grenoble exposes a broad approach to the phenomenon of revitalization, from the 70's to the present. She reviews the different models of revitalization (language nest, master apprentice, revitalization in the home, awakening sleeping languages, etc.) and different types of stakeholders (linguists, language activists, speakers, communities, governments, NGOs, etc.). She also considers different ways of assessing programs (prior/ongoing, resources/goals/needs, level of vitality according to UNESCO, Fishman, EGIDS, etc.), and some of their ongoing challenges (user friendly/pedagogical materials for communities, issues of purism and variation/standardization, etc.). L. Grenoble considers the phenomenon of language revitalization from the point of view of a field linguist engaged with the communities and reminds us that the ultimate goal of revitalization is not necessarily the creation of news speaker. Speaking from her experience in the Arctic Circle, the issues she highlights cover all types of revitalization situations.
The conference and the PowerPoint material are in English.
Lenore Grenoble is a Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of Chicago. She is interested in Slavic, Tungusic and languages of the North, discourse analysis, contact linguistics and language endangerment, attrition, and revitalization. Her fieldwork focuses on languages of Siberia and she is currently engaged in research on the interrelations between language, culture and environment in the North. She is the co-editor (with L. Whaley) of Endangered Languages: Language Loss and Community Responses (1998) and the co-author (with L. Whaley) of Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization (2006)
