Data analysis

Exercise 1. Classify each of the following scenarios according to its model of community engagement from Czaykowska-Higgins (2009) The options are: (a) linguist-focused model, (b) advocacy research, (c) empowering research, or (d) community-based language research.

a. Joshil Patel has been writing his PhD dissertation on the Dene language. He has lived in one particular Dene community for months at a time as he has collected his data, during which time the local school has been implementing a Dene language immersion program, but they are short on language resources. Joshil has helped the community apply to government grants for the language immersion program. As part of his research, Joshil recorded several stories told by elders in Dene. Joshil types up the stories, prints and binds them, and gifts them to the school as a thank you for their contribution to his dissertation research.

b. Sam Klein just got hired as a professor at the University of Manitoba. Once they got settled in, Sam researches which local Indigenous organizations are involved in language revitalization. Sam reaches out to several of those organizations and offers their help and expertise. One of the organizations asks for help with their ongoing dictionary project. Sam begins by attending several meetings as a spectator, and eventually volunteers to join the committee working on the morphological analysis of the complex verbs of the language. Sam is using their status and experience as a university professor to get the committee’s discoveries published in an academic journal, with several community members as co-authors. One of the volunteers on the project is a bright high school student. Sam helps the high school student apply to the linguistics program at UM. 

c. Jane Clark is very interested in wordhood and in developing a cross-linguistic definition of words. She wants to test her hypothesis on a polysynthetic language. She reads up on Inuktitut in the university library. She applies to the university ethics board for conducting an experiment on speakers of Inuktitut. She then travels to an Inuit community and recruits Inuktitut speakers to participate in her experiment. She pays participants $30 for completing her 30-minute experiment.

d. Yuxi Liu and Zihao Wu are writing a grammar of the Taiwanese language Amis. Yuxi and Zihao have visited the Amis communities frequently as they work on their project. They had several community members give comments on the outline and each draft of their grammar. Based on feedback from the community, Yuzi and Zihao have included a glossary of technical linguistic terms so that the grammar can be used by community members and not just by other linguists. Yuzi and Zihao will thank the community members in the acknowledgements section of their book.

Communication and study skills

Exercise 2. Research a language and write an introduction to that language that emphasizes the relationship between the language and its speakers and humanizes them.

Exercise 3. Read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and/or the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Calls for Justice. Choose either one call to action or one call to justice and discuss how it is relevant to linguistic research. How can you create a reciprocal and respectful relationship with the communities whose languages we are studying?

Research and application

Exercise 4. Choose a place that is significant to you, such as where you live, where you grew up, or where your ancestors are from. What languages are/were spoken there? Spend extra time looking for languages and varieties that are not well-known. Are there Indigenous or endangered languages that you’ve never heard of before? How has colonialism and history affected the language landscape of this place?

Language journal

Exercise 5. Is your language an Indigenous language? How do you know?

Exercise 6. Research the history of linguistic research on your language. In what ways were colonial practices in use?

Exercise 7. Write a profile about one of the communities that use your language.