Introduction

There are a great many reasons to consider revitalization, and more than one can be a decisive factor in deciding to take this on. Language revitalization is often packaged as having the goal of creating new speakers of the target language, of building new domains for language use, and of creating a future generation of speakers. This view is overly simplistic. Although creating new speakers is an important goal (and potential benefit) of revitalization, the notion of a speaker is complicated, and achieving fluency in a language requires a lot of work. It can be very liberating to reconceive the benefits and goals of language work to focus less on creating new speakers and more on the broader advantages that revitalization can bring.

Different people have different ideas about why they want to revitalize, and there is no single right reason. It is also important to keep in mind that the motivations for revitalizing can change as one goes along. Revitalization is a dynamic, fluid process. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that revitalization is not just about language: it is a social movement and brings benefits to society as well as to individuals.

The decision to revitalize is often a personal one; it requires time, commitment, and tenacity. But at the same time many people may decide to revitalize to benefit not only themselves, but their family, or their larger community or network of friends and acquaintances. And there may be pressure from friends and family to revitalize, or not to. This chapter provides an overview of common motivations to revitalize, and a discussion of the potential benefits of language vitality. One over-arching impetus for revitalization has to do with identity: defining and claiming identity for an individual or a collective group is one of the most compelling reasons for language work. And for many, it also involves reclaiming rights to self-determination and control over one’s life.

The motivations listed here can be unified under the larger umbrella of identity, but it is important to consider each individually, to understand them better, and to think of how they can both be used to encourage revitalization work, and manipulated to serve its end goals. They are divided into six broad groups that encompass a range of social, psychological, and physical categories/stimuli:

1. (1) connecting with ancestors, the past, and cultural heritage;

2. (2) healing;

3. (3) building community;

4. (4) knowledge and culture;

5. (5) well-being; and

6. (6) cognitive benefits.

As these labels suggest, the categories overlap and, even if the motivation for revitalization comes from one specific area, the resulting benefits are considerably broader.

For clarity, I list these reasons to revitalize as separate points, but it is useful to keep in mind that the benefits are interconnected and a benefit in one area can spill over to another area. This is one reason motivations may change as people revitalize, because they recognize (and need) different benefits at different times. Moreover there are benefits to being bilingual, and these benefits also intersect with the benefits of revitalization. If revitalization moves people from being monolingual to bilingual, they will enjoy the advantages of being bilingual. Being bi- (or multi-) lingual has benefits that are independent of language revitalization: being bilingual in two majority languages brings not only the obvious social benefits of being able to communicate with more people, to interact with them more directly, but also cognitive benefits in improved performance in school, along with physical and mental health benefits. This is important to keep in mind at the outset, as many people mistakenly fear that learning one language interferes with speaking another, and see this as a reason not to revitalize, or not to speak an Indigenous language with their children. This is not true. There is ample evidence that bilingualism is an advantage.

Overall language vitality is related to a combination of factors –social, political, demographic, and practical – and all are usually at play at once. Of greatest relevance are the social and political factors: the use of the language in a wide variety of domains, including the home, schools, places of worship, government offices, on the streets, in stores, in the workplace (broadly defined). The availability of the target language in these various domains is not always the decision of individual speakers, but is often determined by the language and education policies. This is linked to the social prestige of a language, which is in turn related to speakers’ motivations to use the language, and also connected to the economic power of a language: does knowing the language bring job possibilities or hinder them?

Finally practical considerations can also determine whether a language is used. These include such factors as whether the language has a written form, an orthography that makes it keyboard-friendly (for text messages, emails, and social media), a standardized form that is taught in the schools, is used on signage, and so on. This is not to say that any of these are requirements for a language, but rather, if a standardized form has already been sorted out, it may be functionally easier to get it into textbooks and on public signs than if it hasn’t, for example.

As this list makes clear, language use is a social act, and revitalization – by its very nature – involves social transformation. The transformation may be as basic as bringing use of the language into some domain where it was not previously found, or had not been used for many years. But it may involve massive social change if it involves the (re)introduction of language use (and thus language rights) in education and administration, and increased presence and voice in matters of governance. And this is one reason that revitalization efforts are sometimes (often?) met with resistance by authorities (local or national) as they are viewed as a kind of empowerment that may be threatening. Some governments see revitalization, as well as Indigenous language use more broadly, as steps towards self-governance, autonomy from existing powers. One argument against revitalization that is often invoked is the idea that it costs too much. But in fact research shows quite the opposite. A relatively small investment in the use of local or Indigenous languages has big financial payoffs: it improves educational outcomes and improves health and well-being. It thus is more cost-effective to invest in people at an early age, to produce adults who contribute to society.

From this perspective, revitalization is not a sociolinguistic process but a sociological one, and the changes it brings may not be just locally significant, but regionally or nationally. This is a strong view, but it underscores that language revitalization is both social and political, and brings a host of potential benefits and hazards that are not, at first glance, directly related to language itself.

Revitalization is an active process, and the kinds of benefits you gain from it will depend on the investment, at an individual level, at a community level, and at a larger societal level. Because it is an active process, the goals, motivations, and benefits can and often do change over time. One of the core motivations for revitalization is to claim, or reclaim, identity. This is a consideration that drives many revitalization efforts, and in some sense is an overarching motivation that encompasses the separate points given here.

Stories and oral histories have been, and continue to be, important vehicles for teaching about one’s self, for learning what it means to be a member of society, how to deal with adversity, to face challenges, and to celebrate accomplishments. These are important aspects of identity and resilience, which are acquired and accessed through language. For example, in their report on the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet/Wolastoqi immersion programs, Tompkins and Murray OrrFootnote ¹ discuss community activities and benefits in revitalizing language in two First Nations groups in Canada. They note that the benefits are often framed in terms of academic impact, but they find in interviews with participants, language and identity are closely linked. They find that participants in the program evaluate knowing the language as the single route to learning to be a member of the culture. By the same token, the more children are exposed to the culture, the more they learn the language. The two cannot be separated.

1. 1. Connecting with your Ancestors, the Past, and Cultural Heritage

Language revitalization is often a first step in cultural revitalization and reinvigorating cultural traditions. Speaking the language of one’s ancestors is one obvious way to make a connection with the past, with linguistic and cultural heritage. In some cases this can mean being able to speak directly with living relatives, elders, or other people. Speaking to them in their native tongue, your ancestral tongue, is rewarding for both sides, and opens windows to closer understanding of your heritage.

In other cases there may be no speakers of the language, but the cultural heritage lives on in prayers, stories, and songs, and in many cases in written historical documents, not only from ancestors but also from outsiders, such as explorers, missionaries, and colonizers. In order to understand these texts, knowledge of the language is critical. Language revitalization often goes hand-in-hand with cultural revitalization, and connections with the past provide a stepping stone for creating a new cultural future.

As this implies, motivations for revitalizing a language can be spiritual. Language is used for spiritual purposes, to communicate with the gods, spirits, or supernatural beings. Sacred language is an important part of many cultures. While in some cultures, only certain people have access to sacred language, in others, all people do. In many societies language is the primary means for communicating with the spirits or gods, and even in places where a new religion has come to replace the old beliefs, it may not have done so entirely. In Siberia, Indigenous peoples are often Christian, but many communities still have shamans and practice animism alongside Christianity. Shamans communicate with the spirits in the ancestral language, and people need to communicate with the shamans in that language too.

The close connection between spirituality and culture is hard to understand without the ancestral language, as these connections are often expressed, maintained, and negotiated through language. For some, spirits or gods can only be addressed in certain kinds of speech: specialized sacred language, or special words, or more simply in the ancestral language itself. For many Indigenous peoples, nature, spirituality, and language are deeply interwoven.

Breton provides an interesting counterpoint, illustrating that religion and language are intertwined in a variety of ways. Breton is a Celtic language, closely related to Cornish and Welsh. It is spoken in Brittany (Breizh in Breton) in France. The most up-to-date information of the total number of speakers puts it at 206,000, based on a poll conducted in 2007.Footnote ² (This figure is deceptively high, as most speakers are elderly and the language is considered endangered.) There is a strong association between Catholicism and the use of ‘good’ traditional Breton. Although this attitude has led to stereotypes and strong ideologies about who counts as a speaker of Breton, it has also served as a protective factor, and has helped foster revitalization.Footnote ³

Some revitalization programs are aimed at what Leanne Hinton calls the ‘missing generations’: people of parental and professional age who are not able to teach their children their ancestral language because they themselves do not speak it, but their parents, family members, or elders do. The Master-Apprentice ProgramFootnote ⁴ (also known as Mentor-Apprentice) is just one example of a program that specifically partners adults with elders to learn the language, thereby also building stronger, closer connections with at least one member of a generation that spoke it and used it in daily life. Some examples are discussed in Chapter 15. Such bridges are important for building connections that extend far beyond the language itself (a fact which pertains to most or even all revitalization). And this speaks to another motivation for revitalization: passing the language to your children (and their children), and to future speakers. This helps restore links between generations, heal possible ruptures, and nurture cohesion and well-being in the community. In this sense, connecting with generations is not only backward-looking, but forward-looking as well. Connecting with the past may not alone be sufficient motivation for younger (or even older) speakers to revitalize, but understanding history and heritage is an important part of (re)claiming identity.

1. 2. Healing

Many Indigenous peoples cite healing as a primary reason for revitalization. They often feel (with good reason) that their languages were forcibly taken away from them, along with rights to self-determination and to deciding one’s destiny. Revitalizing language is part of a larger process of decolonization, cultural revitalization, and reclaiming the right to determine one’s fate. Colonial language practices have had a deleterious effect on local language vitality in many places. The forced imposition of a colonial (national) language and assimilation to a majority culture resulted in many people feeling a loss of self-worth and pride. These practices have left deep and painful scars. Reclaiming one’s language is an important means to combating the colonial legacy.

Healing implies overcoming trauma, and sadly there are too many people around the world who have suffered traumatic experiences where use of their language is concerned.

In the late nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth century, in different parts of the world (including Australia, Canada, the Soviet Union, the USA, and Scandinavia), children were forcibly taken away from parents to live in residential or boarding schools, in the name of ‘civilizing’ them. In these schools they were often actively punished for speaking their language. This was not only painful for them but also became a driver behind language shift, as they actively avoided teaching their language to their children so as to protect them from these painful experiences. They suffered further damage by being separated from their families; in many cases children returned to their home communities as strangers, unable to speak the local language and having forgotten the local culture. The impact of the residential system cut to the very core of local societies. This also occurred, and continues to occur, in less extreme circumstances in normal day schools, with children punished or ridiculed for speaking their language.

Research has shown that many people in North America do not recognize the term ‘historical trauma’ per se, but speak about it in their own words, referring to it as ‘disturbing times’ or ‘the events the ancestors went through’. They also speak about trauma with specific reference to language (‘I don’t understand my talk, my language’) and talk about sorrow and loneliness of the soul.Footnote ⁵ Language revitalization can be a direct goal, with reclamation of the language as healing. And it can be the means to an end, since language is a vehicle for culture. In addition, research shows concrete benefits for psychological and physical health related to reinforcing a sense of identity in close connection to the use of the heritage language (see section 5 of this chapter).

Healing through revitalization goes beyond language-specific trauma; it is an important means of building resilience. Using a language can be a means of reclaiming and regaining control of one’s fate; it can be an act of political resistance, resistance against linguistic and cultural assimilation, against the very act of colonization. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples declares that all peoples have the right to self-determination: Language revitalization can be a deliberate reclamation of that right.Footnote ⁶

1. 3. Building Community and Social Change

People often begin revitalization with the goal of learning to speak their ancestral language, but then find that the benefits extend far beyond linguistic abilities. Often the very act of revitalization brings people together, creating closer community ties.

In Native North America, people used to say how the video rental truck was a major cause of language shift. Instead of coming out of their homes in the evenings to talk to one another, people would rent videos and stay home and watch them. The videos were eventually replaced by the Internet and widely accessible video content (on programs such as YouTube), but the effect has been the same. Community-based revitalization programs bring people together: in classes and workshops, in planning sessions, and in events celebrating the language. Even where groups of people convene to practice a few phrases, the very act of coming together builds stronger social ties and a sense of shared purpose and therefore community. These programs offset some of the isolating effects of modern society.

Active engagement in community language revitalization also helps create leaders and build research capacity in the community. Some community language activists – Daryl Baldwin of the Myaamia Tribe, and Jessie Little Doe Baird of the Wampanoag, both in North America – have received formal linguistics training to help them do the language work more effectively. They have brought these skills to their communities and put them to work in supporting youth to create future leaders.

1. 4. Knowledge and Culture

Language and culture are deeply intertwined, and knowledge of all kinds is packaged in language and cultural practices. Certain kinds of knowledge are packaged in the words of a language, and other kinds of knowledge are packaged in larger communicative practices. For example, a large number of studies have been done documenting knowledge and use of plants in traditional medicine; this work is of interest to scientists and health care specialists searching for cures for diseases that are still unknown in Western medicine. Oftentimes knowing the name of a plant will tell you about its uses. In many languages, the common name for Euphrasia gives a clue to its usage: in English it’s ‘eyebright’. In my own fieldwork in Greenland, I found that many people knew its name but not its use. It’s called isiginnaq < isi ‘eye’ in Kalaallisut (Greenlandic); the name does give a clue here even though the usage was forgotten, but people would guess that it has something to do with eyes or vision just based on the word.

Reindeer herders have a rich vocabulary for referring to the reindeer and to the herding practices themselves, and these vocabularies can and do vary across different herding cultures. It is not just that the words vary, but what is named, and how it is named, can vary from language to language. The Evenki people of Siberia have a complex vocabulary for different kinds of reindeer, varying with age, sex, and their use in the herd, while in the Northern Sámi of Norway, the labels include categories for colour, body shape, and size in addition to age, sex, and use. In both cases, the complex lexicon encodes important information for identifying different animals for different purposes. Both groups often say that you need to know the language in order to know how to herd reindeer.

The words we use for food tell us what people eat, how they collect it, prepare it, and how they serve and eat it. Many cultures have food taboos, some for particular life cycles (e.g. foods that are banned during pregnancy); some items are eaten in certain communities but banned by one group; and in some communities women cannot eat certain foods, or only members of the royal family can eat certain foods. Food preparation in many cultures connects mothers to daughters, older women to younger women, in communities where it is women who prepare food. These specialized ways of speaking provide all kinds of information about cultural practices involving an important aspect of human life, and the knowledge that accompanies these practices.

Culture is often reflected in the ways people speak, not only the words people use, but also in how people talk about things, what they say when, and to whom. This can be as basic as the ways you greet people, joke with them (or not), or how you thank others or express gratitude, or praise. A more complicated area is child-rearing practices and the ways of speaking (or not) to children. This is a core part of cultural transmission that may be lost in contexts where the last native speakers are great grandparents. In addition, there are sacred ritualized uses of language that are found in religious contexts and provide information about the gods, cosmology, and greater spiritual and philosophical questions. In many places, language is used to communicate with spiritual beings, be it a shaman’s special language found in many different communities in Siberia, or the use of Hebrew in Jewish religion. Cultural practices thus vary from very elevated to what may be seen as everyday and mundane (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Traditional healing knowledge transmitted in Nahuatl. Engaged Humanities project field school, San Miguel Xaltipan, Mexico.

Photo by Justyna Olko

People often talk about languages as providing windows into ways of thinking and different worldviews. Language is powerful; using language can provide access to knowledge, and some kinds of information can only be accessed by using the language. Language revitalization is not just about language, but accessing these different ways of living and being, connecting with culture and the world.

1. 5. Well-being

Both physical and mental well-being are known to be affected by language revitalization. Improved mental well-being is probably the more obvious outcome. People who actively participate in language revitalization report a better mindset and higher levels of self-esteem than before, even when they do not learn much of the language, maybe even just a few words or greetings. There are good reasons for this. Many groups who have lost (or are losing) their language suffer from trauma. This trauma can be the result of a host of causes, but frequently in endangered language communities the trauma involves a history of colonization that has had deep psychological effects and low levels of self-worth. Language revitalization means taking control, reclaiming something that was taken from you, something that was lost. It means taking time to invest in yourself and your family, your circle of friends, and your community.

Moreover, language revitalization often brings people together and unites people in a common goal of learning and using a language. It usually involves building stronger community ties, with a shared purpose. In North America, many Native groups report that those people who are committed to using their language meet more frequently, coming together to practice and learn the language. Even when they are not, strictly speaking, learning the language, they often acquire at least some basic phrases and words, perhaps some greetings, songs and learn the language in symbolic ways. Critically it brings people together. This shared experience of doing language work together connects people, and that helps create an overall positive sense, not only of yourself, but of your culture and heritage.

Thus it is no surprise that people who have access to their language have improved mental health, lower suicide rates, and lower rates of substance abuse than do comparison groups in similar communities who do not use their language. In addition, there is evidence that having access to your ancestral language improves physical health, in terms of reducing the rate of cardio-vascular disease, lowering blood pressure and hypertension, and lower rates of diabetes. These benefits are tied to many things, including living a traditional lifestyle (e.g. by following a traditional diet, which is generally healthier than a Western European diet that is higher in fat, sugar, and salt), more physical activity in engagement with the land and traditional life, and more access to the land. Perhaps some of the health benefits to revitalization come from the fact that it helps (re)connect people with place (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Indigenous communities that lose their languages often face a youth suicide problem. Suicide prevention program, Shoshone Reservation, Fort Hall, Idaho.

Photo by Justyna Olko

But even studies in Australia and Canada that take into account lifestyle factors show that active engagement with language improves both mental and physical well-being at the individual level and the larger societal level. This is a strong motivation for language revitalization.

People in many parts of the world speak of ‘taking back’ their language. It is an active process that involves taking control of their lives and their own well-being. Jane Juuso, a Sámi researcher and educator in Norway, has done much to advance Sámi language learning for adults by making use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Juuso identifies certain language barriers that hinder learners from actually speaking, and thus dubs them silent speakers. Originally published in Norwegian and Sámi, her informative how-to-book has been translated into Swedish and English, and the program is being implemented by First Nations Peoples in Canada.Footnote ⁷ It has proven to be a very effective mechanism for helping people overcome their fears of speaking and making mistakes.

Children who receive mother-tongue education show improvement in overall well-being across the board. A 2012 study by UNESCO shows that they have greater self-confidence, higher test scores, lower school dropout rates, and are less likely to repeat grades. These are advantages that extend to their broader community, with improved social well-being and a greater integration into society. More broadly, research shows similar benefits come from having access to the heritage language, in mother-tongue programs, language teaching programs, and in other venues for hearing and speaking the target language. Studies in different parts of the world – Māori in New Zealand, Mi’kmaq in Canada, Hawaiian in Oceania – show that Indigenous-language immersion programs improve acquisition of the majority language too (see Section 6).

Programs that are embedded in the local language and culture are highly successful in improving the well-being of children and parents. Consider, for example, the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative in Canada. When it was launched in two Ojibwa (Anishanabeeg) schools in southeastern Ontario in 2009, the schools had very low success rates in reading proficiency: Only 13 per cent of the children in Grade 3 at the two schools met or exceeded standardized tests for reading in Ontario. By 2014, approximately 70 per cent of the children in Grade 3 were performing at the average for Ontario in reading, and 90 per cent met the writing standard, performing at better rates than the province as a whole.Footnote ⁸ Moreover, the number of students classified as having ‘special needs’ (a term used to describe children with physical, mental, or behavioural problems – or often who have a different mother tongue) in kindergarten through Grade 3 dropped from 45 per cent to just 19 per cent, and in Grades 4–6, the number went down to only 4 per cent (from 24 per cent). The children did not really have special needs or learning difficulties, they just needed better teaching.Footnote ⁹

These are measurable successes because they involve standard tests. But there are numerous less tangible benefits: increased parent engagement, increased family and community engagement, increased pride in the local language and culture, and overall heightened value of local community practices and ways of knowing and learning.

1. 6. Cognitive Benefits

Linguists often hear that parents opt to raise their children to be monolingual speakers of the majority language so that they will perform well in school. They are afraid that bilingualism will disadvantage their children, or afraid that knowledge of the home language will in some way interfere with learning the majority language, and will inhibit a child’s performance. There is ample evidence that this is not the case at all and that quite the opposite is true. Studies such as those by the psychologist Ellen BialystokFootnote ¹⁰ repeatedly show that there are cognitive benefits to a bilingual brain. These benefits include a shorter processing time, an increased attention span, and a greater ability to multi-task than monolinguals. A number of experiments have shown that bilinguals perform better in tasks requiring focused attention. This probably comes from a kind of necessity: current research indicates that in the bilingual brain, both languages are activated and accessible at the same time. Rather than interfering, this helps bilinguals think in a more focused manner, with faster processing than monolinguals.Footnote ¹¹

Parents often fear that education in a native language will hinder the child’s progress and acquisition of the majority language, but studies show that the opposite is true. Children who are educated in immersion and bilingual programs outperform children in monolingual educational programs in standardized tests. (Note here that these programs use the native language as the language of instruction, it is not a secondary subject or a tool to get children to perform in monolingual programs.) There is some controversy as to why this is the case: does knowledge of the home language provide some sort of cognitive ladder that enables performance in the other language? Or are children who receive initial schooling in the home language better adjusted (emotionally, socially) so that they are better prepared for formal education and thus able to perform well on tests? Although much of the research focuses on the use of a national language and a major immigrant language (such as English and Spanish Dual Language Immersion (DLI) in the USA, English and French in Canada), there is ample research with the same findings for Indigenous languages: Sámi in Northern Norway, and Cherokee and Navajo in the USA, are just a few examples.Footnote ¹²

Another long-term benefit is that bilinguals show delayed effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease compared to monolinguals of the same age, suggesting that the bilingual brain is more resistant to this kind of decline. More research is needed to determine whether bilingualism is preventative, i.e. that bilinguals are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s, or (what is more likely) that the processing advantages of bilingualism offset the effects of the disease: bilinguals have improved cognitive capacity that enables them to function normally for longer even with Alzheimer’s or dementia. That is, bilingualism appears to have an inhibitory effect on mental decline. Regardless it is clear that bilingualism brings an advantage of improved mental capacity and quality of life throughout the lifespan, an advantage that extends well into advanced age. It is a lifelong gift and a strong motivation for revitalization and multilingualism.

Conclusion

Language loss often occurs because of a combination of stressors on speaker populations, including displacement from one’s homeland, which can involve forced migration due to colonization patterns, cultural disruption, and historical trauma. The combination of these stressors can seem overwhelming. But there are multiple potential benefits to revitalization, which is an important means to offset these stressors to improve overall well-being and to reclaim one’s rights to self-determination.

Introduction

The question ‘what do we revitalise’ may seem a rather unusual one. After all, isn’t the answer obvious? We want to revitalise our language. But in order to do so, we need to think about the kinds of questions that are tackled in Chapter 1, such as who wants to ‘save’ the language, and for what purposes?

For example, do we want to expand the scope of the language to be able to use it in schools, or to talk about new technology? That might require new terminology: in which case, who should decide on it, and how? Should we try to recover ‘traditional’ language, or should we try to re-invent our language for a new generation – or something in between? If there is a range of varieties of our language, should we focus on just one? Should we try to create a standard language (copying majority languages), or support linguistic diversity in its fullest sense? Such questions are more often related to political struggles and ideological debates about language ownership or authenticity (see Chapter 7) – and there may be bitter arguments about what the ‘correct’ form of a word or expression is. If a language is highly endangered, it may only be used infrequently and in a fragmented way, so it may need to be reconstructed.

In Chapter 6, Justyna Olko and José Antonio Flores Farfán discuss the varied range of people who may be involved in language revitalisation; we need to consider all their diverse needs and wishes when planning what to revitalise. An endangered language community consists not only of people who speak the language; it includes others who have an interest in what is to be revitalised, and whose views need to be taken into account. For example, people who would like to claim an association with the language by learning it or by supporting revitalisation efforts (e.g. by helping to develop an app) may have other ideas on what to revitalise than people who grew up speaking the language but have lost their fluency through many years of disuse. Members of the wider community also have a stake in policies directed at language (even if only through paying taxes that fund public policy measures).

In broad terms, there is frequently a distinction between traditional speakers and new speakers, whose views on what to focus on and how may diverge significantly. Diplomacy may be needed to reconcile all points of view; one possible way of handling conflicting agendas is to see a range of activities as complementary parts of an overall plan, rather than mutually exclusive.

We also need to remember that decisions we make now will affect how the language is used in the future – not just how it is used now. Do we want to focus on specific areas of use, or look at language revitalisation in a more holistic way? It is important not to limit future options by restricting language to particular areas of life; even if we don’t use all the variations or topics now, we should ensure that there is a safe record of all the rich diversity of a language. But we also need to bear in mind that language revitalisation is not only, or always, just about language, as we discuss later and in Chapters 1 and 9.

There are many different types of languages. While we typically think of language as being oral, or spoken, other means can be employed to convey information, such as sign languages and whistling languages. Whatever type, people try to revitalise languages because they are regarded as being endangered, and because they feel an emotional link to that language. All types of endangered languages have both similarities and differences in why they are endangered and how we go about reversing this, so it is important both to look at our own contexts and to learn from what others have tried (see Chapter 12 on links with other groups).

Contexts of Use

Every language variety has a number of forms; that is, the ways language is used will change according to who is using it, when, where, and for what purpose. For example, the language used to interact with children will differ from that used in formal contexts. This is not just a matter of using alternative words; there will also be differences in the ways sentences are constructed. Languages aren’t single, unchanging entities; because they are used in a wide range of forms by a wide range of people in various places for distinct purposes, they naturally change and evolve. There are often debates in language revitalisation movements about how much change is desirable; this is discussed more in ‘Language Change’ below.

The task of revitalisation can seem overwhelming when viewed in its entirety, so some prioritisation may be necessary (see Chapter 4 on planning). Assessing what resources are available, and to what extent your language is still spoken or not, will help you decide where and how you want to concentrate your revitalisation efforts. Settings where language is used include the home, school, the workplace, social media, religion, bureaucracy, political life, sports commentary, etc. Some of these require specific types of vocabulary or levels of formality (called registers); often minority languages don’t have, or have lost, forms of language that are needed for particular settings or registers. Critics of language revitalisation may claim that this is proof that the language is inferior and not capable of being used in all areas of (especially modern) life. For this reason many language supporters want to expand the spaces in which their language is used. Language promoters may focus on useful or practically oriented areas such as grammar terminology for teaching; others may focus on high-status areas to increase the language’s prestige.

Language revitalisation often focuses on transmitting language to children; the home and school are therefore key spaces of use. We need to be aware that there is a particular kind of language in those situations, that of adult‒child interactions. In Guernsey, where most fluent speakers of Guernesiais are now aged over 80, Julia Sallabank has been involved in trying to collect examples of adult‒child interaction, as well as children’s rhymes and games, from older speakers. This has proved difficult, as there are now very few people alive who have experience of raising their children in Guernesiais. So this may be a way of using language that has to be reconstructed. Where there are still children learning the language (or people who remember raising children in the language), it is important to record this type of language.

One effective and widely used and respected revitalisation method is to implement preschool language immersion centres. These were pioneered in 1982 in New Zealand with the Māori language. The idea behind these centres is to transmit the language directly from an older generation of speakers to a new generation of child speakers. However, if the older speakers are few in number and quite elderly, this option needs to be thought out carefully. To begin with, not all older people have the stamina and desire to interact with preschoolers for many hours a day. In addition, older speakers need to understand that their role is to speak the target language, and only the target language, with the children. That is, it is not necessary or desirable to sit the children down and overtly ‘teach’ the language. The type of language used with small children is usually quite basic, often consisting of descriptions and commands. But as the children grow and get older, a more sophisticated repertoire is required. Ideally, if possible, children should also be exposed to adult interactions in the language. Everyday interactions between adults such as greetings, apologies, requests, etc. are often surprisingly lacking from linguists’ records, but they are important if you want to use your language for conversation and social activities. In Wales, some parents have noticed that children from English-speaking families who go to Welsh-medium school are quite direct in their speech: they have been taught simple commands, but not polite forms of language, which are often more complicated grammatically. However, they can be taught as ‘chunks’ of language whose grammar does not need to be analysed by the children at this stage.

While developing new uses and new words for a language, it is important not to forget traditional areas of life, especially home, socialising, and child language (including games, nursery rhymes, etc.). When schools take over the role of passing on the language, children might only learn school language, and not know how to make friends and be intimate in their language. As a result, they may not speak the language outside school, or with their own children in due course (as has been found in Wales after thirty years of immersion teaching). It has also been found in Brittany that children who learn a formalised Breton at school are unable to converse with older speakers who use regional varieties and more informal speech.

Most language use outside basic conversation involves reading and writing. If the language you are working with is not written, creating an agreed writing system is an essential area to tackle. This will be dealt with in Chapter 14.

Variation and Standardisation

It is not uncommon for one variety of a language to be quite vibrant but for other varieties to be under threat. Minority varieties are particularly vulnerable because they are often regarded as being of lesser value than the dominant or ‘standard’ variety, which has more status. Even speakers can believe that their way of speaking is not as important or valid as more prestigious variants. In Jersey, regional varieties of the island language Jèrriais are called accents. Some accents are disappearing because language teaching focuses on one accent, which has been formalised with a standard spelling that doesn’t always take into account other accents. The formalised accent/variety used in schools is seen by some as the ‘correct’ variety.

Many people get involved in language revitalisation because they want to reconnect with their roots. They want to learn the variety that they identify with; for them learning another version would not fulfill that requirement. For example, most speakers of Māori live in the North Island of New Zealand, but the Kāi Tahu iwi (tribe) in the South Island are working to increase the numbers of speakers of their local variety.

In many cases, an endangered or minority language is perceived as ‘only a dialect’ ‒ or designated as a dialect by the national government. This may have little to do with the degree of linguistic difference, but more to do with status and identity. In this book, we prefer to use the word ‘varieties’ when we talk about how ways of speaking differ across regions, age groups, etc. This is because the term ‘dialect’ has negative connotations of ‘incorrect’ and ‘low status’, and is often used to denigrate minority languages. Language activists often campaign to have the linguistic variety that they identify with recognised as a language in its own right. These issues are discussed in more depth in Chapter 11 on policy and Chapter 7 on ideologies.

There is often pressure to create, teach, and learn a standard version of an endangered language. In the process of standardisation of national languages, the standard is usually based on the variety used by an urban intelligentsia. However, urban varieties of endangered languages typically disappear at an early stage, leaving the choice of prestige variety unclear. Minority and endangered languages usually have extensive variation, and there is often no obvious prestige or standard variety, which can lead to disagreements. In many cases there is no tradition of written literature, or authors may write in a wide range of styles, varieties and spellings, or even different types of script.

It is often assumed that endangered languages have to copy the model of national languages, which have a standard ‘correct’ way of writing and speaking, especially if we want to teach our languages in schools. But this can lead to local ways of speaking being minoritised again. Some language supporters argue that it is better to prioritise more widely used varieties. But there are other models, such as in Corsica, where different varieties are recognised as equally important, and learners are given a choice of which they want to identify with.

What Is It For?

Often when we talk about language revitalisation, our ultimate aim is for the language to be used again by a range of community members from young to old. (This may be the long-term, ultimate aim, but there are many steps to be taken before you can reach it – see Chapter 2 on planning.) Being aware of what resources are available puts us in a better position to know what sort of language revitalisation is possible and achievable and for what purposes. Without considering this we run the risk of activities that fail due to lack of planning. The important thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong when deciding what aspects of your language you focus on. It is also important to ensure that what you focus on now does not limit future options.

But full community use is not the only form of language revitalisation. Your language may have very few, if any, remaining speakers. Such contexts are termed post-vernacular: that is, the language is no longer used as a vernacular, for everyday purposes. However, even in these situations there are productive things that can be done. In the USA, the Breath of Life programme addresses situations where the language hasn’t been spoken for several generations but where there is documentary material, collected by linguists or anthropologists, which is housed in libraries and archives. Working together, language learners and scholars pair up with graduate linguistics students to locate relevant material and work on useful language resources, which can range from (re-)creating a prayer through to working on a spelling system for the language.

Because endangered languages are no longer widely spoken in everyday life, it can be difficult for learners to find people to converse with in their language. Many people in language revitalisation movements turn to activities such as songs, theatre and other performances in order to find ways to use and celebrate their language, as well as to create a sense of community endeavour (see Chapter 16 on arts and music). Or they may wear a T-shirt or jewelry with words in the language on, to demonstrate identity and solidarity. Performances and festivals are often very enjoyable occasions that bring together the community and raise awareness of the language and culture. A recent press release described how a school play was being performed entirely in Māori, a language which was banned in schools for over hundred years. The article mentions that not all of the performers are fluent in Māori, which could be interpreted negatively (they don’t know the language properly), or positively (they are engaging with the language and trying to learn).

Another common focus of language activists is the ‘linguistic landscape’ – supporters campaign to have signage, public announcements, etc. in their language to raise its status, increase its presence in public life, and make non-speakers or tourists aware of it. If politicians or businesses support such measures, it is often in order to highlight local distinctiveness. These types of activities may not require fluency, but instead use parts of language symbolically or emblematically, to express identity. For many people this is a valid and adequate way of engaging with language, but it is only one way of looking at language revitalisation; for others, the aim may be to re-create a fluent speaker community, or to reclaim culture.

We are not suggesting that prioritising certain areas of language means that revitalisation should be one-dimensional; different registers and spaces of use can be complementary and mutually reinforcing, and individuals or groups may want to focus on different areas. It is important not to see these as mutually exclusive. There is a threat that if only a narrow spectrum of a given language is ‘revitalised’, the result may be perceived as artificial and not be sustainable.

We argue that it is important to have conscious aims (see Chapter 4 on planning) and to be aware of the ideologies that underlie these aims, as well as different people’s motivations for language-related activities (see the chapter on attitudes and ideologies). If not, we run the risk of losing a language through focusing only on symbolic activities. As Adrian Cain, Manx Language Development Officer, has commented: ‘Language awareness raising isn’t an end in itself, and if it doesn’t encourage people to learn and speak, then it hasn’t worked’.

Who Is It For?

In many situations, revitalisation efforts begin when there are still at least a few older speakers in the community, but they are initiated by younger generations. This leads to a paradox of language revitalisation: the momentum for revitalisation typically emerges from those who did not grow up as speakers of the language. The younger language activists, because they did not grow up with the language, are keenly aware of what they have not had access to in respect of their culture and identity (some learners of Guernesiais have said they felt ‘robbed’). In the words of the Joni Mitchell song, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone’. But to be able to revitalise the language, these ‘new’ speakers will want and need to involve older speakers. However, the needs and desires of these two groups of people may differ, and interactions can lead to some tricky social and political issues. One effective way of getting older and younger speakers together for mutual benefit is the Mentor-Apprentice model (also known as Master-Apprentice model), where an older or fluent speaker is paired with a person committed to learning and passing on the language (see Chapter 15 on teaching and learning for details).

As discussed in Chapter 8 on types of communities, in many endangered language communities there are a significant number of people who can understand the language but not speak it fluently. In Guernsey, an informal group who call themselves ‘The Rememberers’ (in Guernesiais, Les Rallumeurs or ‘re-kindlers’) meet weekly to chat in Guernesiais and reactivate their passive language knowledge into active use, improving both fluency and accuracy – topics often include obscure words or grammatical points. The Rememberers are mainly aged 55–70 and some have not used Guernesiais for fifty years. In some cases, parents used Guernesiais with each other but not with the children, or in other cases Rememberers stopped speaking Guernesiais after discouragement at schools. The Rememberers is a rare example of effective bottom-up language planning which focuses on rebuilding social networks and increasing participants’ frequency and fluency in everyday conversation and language use (rather than formal teaching). However, their conversations often focus on ‘how the old people would have talked’ rather than ‘how we might talk in the future’. If this goes unnoticed, it might impact the ideas and possible choices about the kind of language that should be brought to the future, taught and revitalised. So even in an informal conversation group, it is important to think about our ideologies and goals of interaction, as well as which elements of language, such as topics, registers, and vocabulary, to focus on: for example, in one session a member of The Rememberers asked others to help recall or reconstruct words for movements such as leaning forward. (This is not to say that informal sessions should become formal grammar lessons, as seems to be happening in some Mentor-Apprentice programmes.)

Language Change

All living languages change over time, especially across generations. Languages also change due to the influence of other languages. Languages don’t become endangered without another language that people are shifting to, and bilingual people always mix languages. We need to be aware of and accept the dynamic nature of language: the language we revitalise will not be the same as it was in the past, and that is completely normal. Some older speakers in Guernsey have expressed concern that if Guernesiais is taught in schools, ‘it won’t be the language we know’. They feel a strong connection to the language of their youth, and worry that it might become ‘corrupted’. But if it is not taught to a new generation, it won’t be a language that anyone knows. And that new generation needs to be able to pick it up and run with it, make it their own, and develop the language for whatever they want to use it for.

Change and growth are signs of life and health, not of decline. English, for example, has been enriched by many words from other languages: Well-known examples include pyjamas from Hindi, robot from Polish or Czech, and chocolate from Nahuatl. Indeed, the only languages that don’t change are truly dead languages, which may only exist in archives. Linguists have found that ironically, endangered languages change faster than larger or more vital languages. This is often due to influence from other languages, especially the dominant one(s), which can be difficult for some language supporters to accept, although it is impossible to prevent.

In the case of Māori and Guernesiais, practically all speakers have English as their dominant language, and most speakers under the age of around sixty are likely to have learnt Māori or Guernesiais as a second language (there are young neo-speakers of Māori, who have been brought up to speak it as a first language, but their parents are probably second language or ‘new’ speakers). As with all languages, we have observed differences in grammar and pronunciation between the speech of younger and older speakers (you can see this in English too, e.g. ‘I’m like …’ instead of ‘I said …’.)

Linguists have observed that endangered languages undergoing change may seem to be simplified or to become more regular (e.g. in verb forms). But there can also be additions and new borrowed words or structures from a dominant language, especially given that people who are bilingual inevitably mix their languages (which is also frequently lamented, but can’t be prevented). Sometimes direct translations can bring new and useful ways of saying things, such as bailler a hao in Guernesiais, a direct translation of English ‘give up’. The pronunciation or accent of younger or new speakers may differ from that of older speakers, which again older speakers may find difficult to accept.

When the spaces where a language is used become restricted, its vocabulary and forms can also reduce, as some ways of using it become forgotten. When community members assimilate to a dominant culture and language, some of their cultural expressions may change or be lost, including traditional greetings, politeness and kinship terms, and counting systems. In the Isle of Man, a decision was taken to use the English number system rather than the traditional Manx one in the Manx-medium school, to enable the children to follow the mainstream curriculum.

We also find that highly endangered languages can fragment into many small varieties, which may be only used within one family or by one individual – all of whom may consider that they speak the correct way! These changes are often not new – for example, some can be seen in nineteenth century Guernesiais literature; in the Americas, such changes go back to the sixteenth century and are often well documented. But by the time they are noticed, it is not possible to stop them (if it were ever possible). It is important to stress that language change does not imply that our languages are inferior or unsuitable for use or for reinforcing. Neither should language change be seen as an obstacle to revitalisation.

Purism

An important part of language and cultural reclamation involves collecting and documenting the knowledge of elders and devising ways of expanding that knowledge. However, it is common to focus on the heritage aspects of the language, which link the language with the past. Even linguists are not immune to this, with one linguist recently confessing to not including borrowings from other languages when he documented a language in the 1970s in a desire to represent only the ‘purest’ version of the language.

The idea that there is an ‘authentic’ way of producing your language can lead to ideas that there is only one right way of speaking or writing. While it can be helpful to remember that all living languages change, it must be remembered that the sort of change a language undergoing revitalisation may experience can be extreme and challenging to older speakers.

One thing that hampers many revitalisation initiatives is language purism. ‘Purism’ is the idea that there is a ‘pure’ or ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ way of using your language. Typically, language purists are older speakers of a language who don’t like the new pronunciations or simplified grammar used by ‘new’ speakers of a language (see Chapter 7 for more about language attitudes and ideologies). Along with this type of thinking comes the idea of ownership: There may be strong feelings about who owns the language and who gets to say what is right and what is wrong. There can also be new ‘language owners’ who stigmatise older speakers for using too many loanwords. In a revitalisation situation there are usually limited resources, so you need to include everybody who has an interest (see Chapter 10 for discussion of power dynamics).

It is worthwhile thinking about what ‘authentic’ really means: genuine, valid, real. If someone uses the language for a real purpose, whatever that use is, it is a valid, authentic reason for using language. For example, in Guernesiais there is a word, warro, which is used as informal greeting (like ‘hello’ or ‘hi’). Although it has been documented as used by some of the oldest speakers and appears in a highly respected dictionary, the authenticity of this word has been called into question by some community members who say that it was not used in their families.Footnote ¹ But whether or not it was used in the past, people nowadays feel an authentic need for an informal greeting in Guernesiais. Using this word will encourage them to use Guernesiais more and facilitate real communication.

If your aim is to have the language spoken by younger generations, you need to be aware that the language will often need to change to be relevant to their interests and needs. All too often older speakers criticise younger ones, which can put them off speaking their languages entirely. It is more productive to encourage them to use the minority language, in whatever form it takes. It is known from research into language learning that there are intermediate stages before a learner acquires the whole of a new language. The processes of language contact and revitalisation can resemble some of the stages of language learning. In any kind of learning, we have to learn to walk before we can run; once new speakers become confident with what might be seen as ‘simplified’ language, they can start to tackle more complicated traditional forms if they want to. It has to be remembered that young speakers are the future of any language. If it survives, it will belong to them.

New Words for New Uses

If your language hasn’t been used as a community language for a while, it will need a big input of new vocabulary. Just think of all the technological words which have entered the major languages in just the last ten years: words for smartphone, app, to tweet, to unfriend. Not only might you need vocabulary for these concepts; if your language is to be used as a medium of instruction in schools, you will also need words for concepts such as graph, molecule, colonisation, and curriculum (see Chapter 15 on teaching and learning).

Simply borrowing words is often the easiest default option for new terms such as refrigerator. Some older speakers find it difficult to conceive of their language being used in new ways, and simply use the new language to describe new things. So their speech may be peppered with borrowed or loanwords, which some zealous new speakers may dislike. Some language planners (e.g. Irish) have been criticised for using mainly loanwords in non-traditional contexts, while others (e.g. Quechua) have been criticised for being too purist.

Languages have always had ways of creating new words, which can be studied and reproduced. If there are historical language records, traditional literature, accounts, poems, or documentary archives, one option is to rediscover, reintroduce, or repurpose some terms and structures that have fallen out of use. An example of this in English is the word broadcast, which originally meant to throw seed outwards in a field. It fell out of use with the mechanisation of farming, but was reintroduced as a metaphor when radio was invented. There are many additional ways of creating new terms in a language. In the late 1980s when revitalisation of the Māori language was well underway, the Māori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori), in response to many community requests, coined a large number of new words using a variety of approaches. Their main aim was to avoid loanwords, so strategies included circumlocutions, for example, hekerangi to mean ‘parachute’ (literally heke ‘to descend’ and rangi ‘sky’). Another frequent strategy was calquing, where the literal meaning of an English word was translated, for example, ‘bisect’ is weherua (wehe meaning ‘to split’ and rua meaning ‘two’). Sometimes existing words were combined, for example pūhiko for ‘battery’, where pū means ‘origin’ and hiko means ‘electricity’. In fact hiko originally meant ‘lightning’ and its meaning has been extended to include electricity. Another strategy was to repurpose archaic words (for example, ngota for ‘atom’ where the original meaning was ‘fragment, particle’).

In several languages, such as Manx and Māori, there are committees of people seen as language experts who are tasked with creating new words; but sometimes they take too long to decide on and disseminate new words. For example, teachers of Māori needed a word for ‘number’ to use in lessons and did not want to borrow a word. By the time the language committee had decided on a term, each teacher had their own different word.

Another way of developing new terminology is an inclusive ‘crowdsourcing’ approach, which encourages groups of people to talk about the topic – both face to face and online – and collect the most popular terms. This can even be done together with the oldest speakers to reduce possible tensions in the community about ‘what to revitalise’.

Not Just About Language

Jeanette King’s research has found that many people are not only (or principally) interested in revitalising a language for its own sake, but they often have a personal reason such as getting in touch with their family roots, joining a language community, or gaining a sense of achievement or well-being.

Language, Culture, and Identity

Language is deeply linked with culture. Most of those involved in language revitalisation talk about how culture is intrinsically linked to language. When you learn and speak a language you are learning and speaking culture. Some of this cultural expression may be in the form of cultural values, such as terms of address, etc. In addition, language can be closely related to cultural practices. For Māori in New Zealand, for example, the rituals of encounter in a pōwhiri (formal welcome) have to be delivered in Māori, with opening calls being performed by women, followed by speeches which necessarily contain much ritualistic language and expectations, such as paying respects to the dead. There is also the requirement for each speech to conclude with an appropriate song.

Most of those involved in language revitalisation are involved in reclaiming aspects of identity as well as cultural practices. This means that revitalisation is just as much about revitalising people as language. In other words, it’s not just about what you are revitalising but who you are revitalising.

Language revitalisation often involves campaigning for someone else to do something, e.g. for a local government authority to erect signage, or for schools to teach the language. Such campaigns are valuable and can be a way for people who don’t speak the language to get involved and to contribute to revitalisation. However, we need to be aware that it can be easier to focus on what others ought to do, rather than alter one’s own behaviour, especially if one is not very confident in one’s language competence. So, for example, some language promoters have reported that they find it easier to perform a poem or help in a classroom, which involves less impromptu language use than speaking it with their own children. So, increasing the self-confidence of language supporters is a vital part of language revitalisation.

Conclusion

Different people in language revitalisation movements have different aims and motivations. Some have a nostalgic, purist ideal of the kind of language they want to preserve. Others want to extend the areas where their language is used and have it recognised as a fully developed, modern language which can be used for all purposes. Others want to enjoy using their language with friends and family, while others want to affirm their identity through using a few words and phrases in greetings, rituals, songs, etc. Others may find that re-connecting with their language can enhance personal and community well-being.

All of these (and more) are valid elements of an overall language plan, but different priorities are too often a source of disagreement. It is therefore important to discuss openly what we want to achieve, why, and also what is achievable – in the short term, medium term, and long term. Plans should be regularly evaluated and revised, so that different functions, uses, and spaces can grow and be added to over time, as part of a longer sustainable plan. This involves recognising the strong feelings, attitudes, and ideologies that people have about language. Above all, it will involve compromise. These are all considerations when you are thinking about what sort of language you will be revitalising.

Ethics is often broadly understood as answering the questions of ‘what is good?’ and ‘what is bad?’. Of course, this assumes that there are simple answers to these (and similar) queries. We define ethics in language revitalization as reflection upon the problems of correct, desirable, and sensitive actions around revitalization itself. Its importance stems from the fact that decisions taken without considering such ethical questions might end up being problematic or even harmful to communities. Thus tackling this issue can contribute to the success of language revitalization. While engaging in language revitalization, weFootnote ¹ often find ourselves in situations that are anything but obvious – for example, in situations where two (or more) possible good courses of action clash. For this reason, we will outline a series of discussion points for those engaged in revitalization. We have presented suggestions only where we felt we could offer potentially useful solutions or ‘best practices’. Still we know that there is no valid and universal code of ethics or rules of conduct, even within a single community. For this reason, all of our points are, first and foremost, suggestions and points of departure for reflection.

Basic Questions

The first logical step to language revitalization is recognizing that a language is endangered. However this might not sit well with the community that speaks it (or that has historically spoken it). As the awareness that their language and culture is disappearing can be a depressing thought, some speakers may deny that it is happening. Therefore some people might ask whether to start a revitalization project at all? Other chapters in this book discuss reasons and benefits of language diversity and language revitalization (see Chapters 1, 8, 9), so they might provide a starting point for such a discussion within a community.

This however leads us to the second question: who should start (and continue) the revitalization process? Our experience shows two main kinds of people who are normally involved: internal (often called ‘activists’) and external, mostly researchers, who usually become interested in the language for purely academic reasons (like documenting interesting topics) and only later become involved in the revitalization process. These two groups differ in many ways. Their knowledge about the community is different and the time and money available to them, likewise, vary. Broadly speaking, activists are more likely to have more time and flexibility (since they often live in the community and so, even with full-time work, are still at hand) but less likely to have money at their disposal than researchers. On the other hand, researchers might have impressive financial means (thanks to funded projects) but strict time constraints (due to project deadlines). This can be a cause of misunderstandings and problems. Yet the process of revitalization doesn’t end with those two groups: local authorities, politicians, and governments are often important as well. There might also be some overlap in that activists can become researchers (like two of the authors of this chapter, who are currently writing their PhD theses on various topics related to their home community of Wilamowice). Furthermore a researcher might become so engaged with the community that their actions cross over into activism. However no matter how respectable the authorities helping you, no matter how much money they can offer, no matter how good the methods they employ are, revitalization won’t work without local engagement and local conviction about the goal, purposes, and benefits. Likewise, it will not succeed without respecting a local sense of ethics and good practices.

A Decision-Making Process and Dealing with Dilemmas

An Indigenous community itself is never homogenous and there might be people who disagree with the need for revitalization at all. An even bigger issue arises when only a part of the community wants to revitalize their language and the other part is against it. So, if someone wishes to start a revitalization project, would it make sense to try to convince them not to do so, or is it better to just ignore them and work on one’s (self)-appointed tasks? As languages are usually lost because people decide not to speak them or cannot speak them anymore, an important challenge for activists is to question majority attitudes and practices within the community.

On the other hand, other community members might see revitalization as needed and useful but might not want to collaborate with others who are involved. Being an activist means being more visible than other members of the community. More often than not activists aren’t democratically elected and this might put them in conflict with others – especially those who like being in the limelight or have been in a position of power for a long time. Opinions on the language itself can also vary as some activists are more concerned about taking the language forward and some might want to preserve older forms of it and keep it as it was previously. Of course, there may also be conflicts about how to go about revitalization.

Coming from Outside and Dealing with Internal Parties

What if a community at large doesn’t want revitalization at all and the only interest is from outsiders, often (but not exclusively) researchers? Outsiders cannot revitalize a language without community involvement. All they can do is raise awareness and change attitudes, but this doesn’t mean they can’t try their best to promote the idea of revitalization in the community. Researchers face their own set of questions. How much and in what way should outsiders learn about the community beforehand? One thing we can emphasize is that coming to a community without any knowledge of local culture, traditions, and language will likely discourage its members from collaborating in the proposed project. Thus putting in time and effort during the preparation stage is essential when establishing collaborations. We will describe this in more detail in the sub-section entitled ‘Establishing Collaboration’.

An unsolvable dilemma is whether a researcher should consult the community when planning a project before asking the funding agency for money. To make sure that the planned activities do not clash with the community’s ideologies, needs, and behaviors, it is best to discuss the project with members of the community beforehand – even if with just a few. However, then their hopes might be raised and they might not understand the complicated procedures and long times needed for the projects to be reviewed and chosen for funding. This could lead them to think you let them down when you are only waiting for the results of various calls for proposals. One way not to run into this problem is not to discuss it at all, but then it might turn out that the planned actions don’t sit well with the community. The best course of action may be to under-promise initially (i.e. promise the bare minimum needed so as not to raise the hopes and expectations either of the community or the funding agency) and then over-deliver once the project has started (don’t stop at what you promised, give back as much as possible).

Time constraints posed by academic programs are something that should also be considered carefully. While the length of the project does not have to translate into the length of engagement with a community, it might determine it – especially if the community is far removed from the researcher’s residence. In general, we have seen that Indigenous communities tend to warm up to outsiders gradually and at different paces. Usually they become more open and welcoming once they get to know them better. Therefore planning a longer project (or longer engagement) might help to address better the situation and goals of the community. What counts most in our opinion is that personal engagement outlasts the funding process.

Yet the best-case scenario is not always possible and there might be situations in which it is known from the start that the engagement will end after a certain period of time. In such a situation the best thing to do is to inform the members of the local community about that from the start and keep information clear and up to date during the communication process; sometimes saying something just once might prove not enough due to cultural differences. After receiving funding to work on one language and with a specific community, some researchers might be tempted to publish the results and move on to a new one. This is often referred to as a ‘data extraction’ approach and its ethical aspects can be problematic, especially considering community involvement and how it might benefit them. It is also important for outsiders to care about what will happen to their local collaborators once they leave. If a researcher left a good impression, all is well. But if not everything went right, members of the community who collaborated on the project might be associated with the researcher and thus reflected negatively on. It is a good idea to stay in constant contact with them and to do one’s best to leave the best impression. In such a case, it is also advisable to plan to train local activists/volunteers to continue the revitalization activities once the researcher has left. These matters relate to the broader question of establishing collaboration, which we will discuss now.

Establishing Collaboration

How to establish initial collaboration with a community? How does one choose local collaborators? Is there a way to make sure that language revitalization goes on without discriminating any group in the community and making sure that all members have equal chances to be involved rather than marginalized? These questions guide decisions about establishing collaborations. First of all, it is advisable for external researchers coming to the community to include its members and make them part of the decision-making process at all stages of the project, including planning, realization, and evaluation. Local revitalizers are often in the best position when it comes to including and consulting other community members during all the planning and decision-making stages of the revitalization process. On the other hand, a naive external researcher may unwittingly ally with one local faction and alienate others.

Creating a hierarchy as an outsider working with coworkers from the local community can cause controversies. This means, for example, avoiding favoritism, e.g. when commissioning handicrafts from specific people in the community. The eldest are not necessarily speaking the ‘only correct’ variant of the language or even a ‘correct’ one at all, as their language might have experienced attrition due to disuse. Those who do not know the language well might nevertheless have traditional knowledge, which is an important part of the culture. Local activists are not the only ones who can collaborate with researchers. Striving to understand relations among different groups of interest in the community, and remembering that sometimes the interested parties may try to hide these relations for various reasons, can prevent certain problems from arising. In some contexts, being an obvious outsider can help to avoid being associated with any faction.

Local revitalizers often act as ‘radars’, paying attention to the emotions, opinions, and attitudes of community members. But at the same time they might act against the ‘common opinion’ shared by many community members. During their activities they might tread ‘uncomfortable’ ground for other members of their community. This discomfort might be related to historical traumas or specific situations that the group or individuals have gone through. Local revitalizers might therefore be tempted to avoid certain subjects; caring for the well-being of community members can help the revitalization process gain more allies. However, confronting such topics – with as much tact and caution as possible so as not to hurt anybody further – might also prove a valuable experience. Local revitalizers are also in the most comfortable starting position when it comes to including the community during all the planning and decision-making stages of the revitalization process. However, they also should pay attention not to exclude any sections of the community – this means inviting everyone to get involved (and especially those who are interested). Worsening local conflicts or driving divisions deeper as a result of revitalization activities is precisely something that should be avoided. Local revitalizers have yet another advantage in that they have known the members of the community for a long time and so can choose their collaborators more thoughtfully and on the basis of longer experience.

In the case of many disappearing languages, the main language carriers are the elderly. When working in language revitalization, one must be careful not to exploit them – for example, through taking up too much of their time or reminding them too much of traumas they might have experienced. As they grow older, their health can worsen and they can eventually die, thus leaving younger people as possible collaborators. This can be emotionally difficult for researchers and activists who have got to know them. However, younger generations can’t always help in the way that elders have done. If language revitalization is supported by a project with strict deadlines, taking care not to plan too much work for the elderly is even more salient, as their illness or death could result in unnecessary pressures on all the surviving parts of the community.

There may also be members of the community who do not speak the language in question and do not show any particular concern about it. Still some forms that appear in their use of the dominant language might be influenced by the minority one. Similarly, a seemingly ‘worse’ knowledge of the dominant language might not be a sign of an uneducated and ‘worthless’ interlocutor, but a new and hitherto unexplored field of research – one of language contact in that community.

It is also good to remember class and gender issues in the community, which are best analyzed on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes publishing a book or creating a movie in which the members of one class or people of one gender will be more prevalent can result in controversies. Of course, it can also be done on purpose to help to create visibility of minorities within minorities, but then it needs to be done consciously, not haphazardly without considering the implications for the group.

The position of an outsider can also be exploited by the community collaborators. A feeling of prestige or the possibility of receiving some benefits from collaborating with the academy can result in conflicts and internal discrimination. The opposite is also possible. Members of some communities do not want to get engaged in collaboration regarding the language because they fear being seen as deriving private profit from a common good, i.e. the language. There are no clear answers and solutions to such problems and they are best approached on a case-by-case basis and with the most careful use of intuition, respect, and sensitivity.

As an outsider, preparing for language revitalization in a community is less about choosing the correct kind of technical equipment or having the proper monetary means as it is about learning. Making an effort before meeting to learn as much as possible about some of the most important subjects such as local internal dependencies, cultural codes, and history of the field and community, can make a huge difference. We recommend that outsiders learn about the community’s culture and history, including its rules of respect and conduct. Developing sensitivity toward the community’s needs, its perspectives, and its knowledge systems might prove more different than assumed. Cultural differences are not only in play when dealing with far-away countries. There are some places that have such a vast amount of literature on them that it is not possible to read it through in a reasonable amount of time, so it is understandable that one has to limit oneself. However, there are also places that have next to nothing written about them, or that have their last description dating from a long time ago, thus making it horribly outdated. Whatever the case, effort is of paramount importance as it shows respect to the community through not coming totally unprepared. However, in no case should one treat the written word as having absolute precedence over what you are told by the members of the community – things might have changed since the writing of the books, they might reflect an external point of view or they might reflect perspectives of only one specific group within the community (and, as already remarked, most communities are not homogenous).

Even when working with communities near the researcher’s home area and doing one’s best to develop sensitivity and awareness of local norms and rules of respect, one can still be perceived negatively. Being conscious of that is a good step toward approaching possible issues. These might be the result of internalized negative stereotypes or judgments from both the sides: Researchers might be seen as people from huge cities, or as representatives of the dominant culture (both characteristics that can be perceived negatively). However, their actions might also prove offensive to the community without the researcher being aware. In such a case neither side is at fault and understanding that helps in approaching issues with an open mind.

Facing the Past and Dealing with Political Tensions

Many communities come with a burden of past or present oppression, persecution, experiences of ethnic discrimination, marginalization, and related traumas. In such cases, the group may ask itself difficult questions about how much visibility they want; in the context of their history, including possible traumas, minoritization, and related persecutions, it is possible that the group may not want to draw attention to itself. Would bringing up a specific subject result in the community’s discomfort, fear, or insecurity? Would reminding the public of some difficult issues reignite old troubles? Sometimes it might seem that the problem does not exist or has been solved long ago, only for it to come back in the least expected moment. It might be reasonable to discuss these issues with community members – if and how they wish difficult topics to be brought up or dealt with – as sometimes time is needed for a community to realize what would be best for its members and the future of the language. In such a situation helping to create safe spaces for discussing it in the community would significantly facilitate such deliberations.

For example, in 2018 the Vilamovian youth, who were engaged in language revitalization, wrote and staged a theater play dealing with the violent ethnic persecutions suffered by the eldest generations during and after the World War II. This was not well received by local authorities and was very stressful for the youths themselves, in part because of Poland’s descent into conservative authoritarianism, which sees minorities as a threat to the territorial integrity and ethnic cohesion of the state. However, the decision to stage this play was a bottom-up one, taken by the young members of the community. Instead of intimidating them, the experience became a source of pride and empowerment for them. Were it done as an external initiative (e.g. by a researcher or an institution), the negative reactions might have been seen as lacking of sensitivity toward the community and putting its young members in risky and disturbing circumstances. Thus, we believe that certain, especially difficult, decisions should be made only by members of the community. Even if they represent just one of its groups, this does not deprive them of the legitimacy to act.

Collaborating as an academic with a minority may position an outsider politically, whether they want it or not. Linguistic minorities often overlap with ethnic minorities and this raises questions about their nationality and possible separatism. Basque and Catalan in Spain are two famous cases, but similar examples abound (in Poland a very similar situation surrounds Silesia). Journalists will undoubtedly ask you for your opinions about those subjects and more. Academics may be asked to testify about such difficult topics in person, or to pen scientific opinions that will carry more weight than any research paper because on their basis some parliaments might vote yes or no to a law giving a community the right to learn in its language, or to use it in their signage etc. Writing this sort of text carries a huge responsibility so it is best to be careful not to hurt the most vulnerable party, i.e. the minoritized community. When asked whether what they are speaking is a language, the best answer is the one respecting the perspective of the community. The absolute worst course of action is to use a term that will be understood as diminishing the importance of the language. ‘Dialect’, ‘patois’, even ‘ethnolect’ all can be seen as dismissive and imposing such external categories on the speech of community language can be seen as unethical or as a form of violence.

Ownership, Consent, and Other Legal Issues

Legal issues also fall under the subject of ethics. Laws change so much and so often that any set of precise recommendations we might include here would quickly become outdated. Therefore we will name topics, which do not depend on a particular wording of the law but touch upon legal issues in general. While doing language revitalization, one needs not only to familiarize oneself with the laws of the land and obtain all the necessary permissions from local authorities, but also – especially in the case of academics – to comply with the legal requirements in one’s own institution, with regard to national and international laws (if applicable), or the requirements of one’s funding agency. If the revitalization is supported by sponsors, agreeing on these rules is also an ethical question.

There are also situations where what is legal may clash with what is ethical. This refers, for example, to intellectual property and authorship rights. These are often violated when local collaborators are treated as ‘informants’ and not as partners and coauthors of research and related language revitalization programmes, including scientific and educational products. It is ethical to consult people before publishing their data or transcribed utterances and, if possible, offer them the position of coauthors or named contributors. What would seem ethical and culturally sensitive may, however, clash with national or international legal regulations. For example, research participants usually do not legally own their words once recorded. The recordings legally belong to the organization that employs the person creating them. However, this does not have to be a guiding practice for sensitive researchers. Whatever the ownership rights might be in the country where one is working, including the collaborators and interlocutors as coauthors or of a publication, or at least naming them as contributors (if they agree for their identities to be revealed in a specific publication), is a commendable practice.

No matter what the laws might be in the country, there might be parts of culture that do not incur any legal protection but that the community does not want to be copied or published. For example, the Vilamovians (both generally as members of an ethnic minority who are inhabitants of the town of Wilamowice, but also more specifically as members of a tightly knit dance ensemble) have a very distinct song and dance repertoire and see any other folk group performing parts of it as a cause for outrage. Similarly the Maasai had their handicrafts copied – not only by huge Western corporations but also by other nearby tribes. So, sometimes it would be more sensitive for researchers not to engage in disseminating content which could be copied without the community’s consent. Even local activists may be wary of engaging in external language revitalization because they do not want to be accused of ‘betraying the group’s secrets’ or selling the rights to the language or culture. Of course, a full application of this principle would prevent anything from being published, so consultations are a reasonable course of action.

Another legal issue arises when the commercial benefits of revitalization go to outside parties. This is often intertwined with cultural appropriation as in the case of various big name fashion designers ‘copying’ or ‘being closely inspired by’ various Mexican traditional costumes, but it can also occur on a smaller scale as in the case of Wilamowice. Some enterprising Poles living in the region have started selling materials based on Vilamovian cultural heritage. Yet the economic profits do not reach the community who feels that they own the moral rights to those materials.

It is unacceptable to publish anything without prior consent. Of course, it does not have to be given in writing. There are groups that are historically illiterate and calling them out on it is a very bad idea. Yet there are also groups, which have been in a problematic situation vis-à-vis various bureaucratic forms, which they were forced or coerced to sign. In these cases, asking them to declare their consent in writing might recall these traumatic memories and so it is much better to include the expression of consent at the beginning of a recording. This might sometimes be problematic for academics if a funding agency or their institution asks for a written consent. Even so, it would be advisable for a researcher to prioritize the comfort and well-being of local collaborators over formal requirements, and, if necessary, negotiate oral consent with the institutions they depend on. After all, this may contribute to a greater decolonization and sensibilization of those institutions.

Moreover consent, according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, should always be understood as FPIC: ‘Free, prior, and informed consent’. In other words, it is valid only when it is given freely (sometimes also termed ‘enthusiastically’ i.e. without pressure), when it is given prior to an action deriving from it (so, for example, requesting permission to record someone after the recording has already taken place is unethical), and when the person who is asked for consent understands what they are agreeing to. It follows that both written consent forms and oral questions relating to consent should employ language that is easy to understand. This suggestion can also be helpful for other forms of communication with the community. However, precautions are not always enough, and we can find ourselves in a situation when a person who was recorded or provided some other kind of information asks for it not to be disseminated. It is easy enough to deal with this before the fact, but what to do when material created already (book, movie, etc.) prompts this person to withdraw their consent? Of course, there are perfectly legal answers here, but they might not be satisfactory to the member of the community and what to do in such a situation is an example of a serious ethical challenge.

One might sometimes be confronted with a moral dilemma connected to gathered data. Let’s say one finds some older, good-quality recordings and wants to share them with the community. However, the first collaborator to hear the recording informs you that the person featured in the recording was implicated in many problematic actions in the community and being reminded of them in a language-learning material could turn people away from the language even faster. There are various points of view and various relationships and reputations here at stake, and it is by no means easy to balance them. Such a recording could be anonymized or, if it stays recognizable even after such a process, one possibility is to use such a recording for very short excerpts, like the pronunciation of single words in a digital dictionary.

Sharing the documentation (as it is also part of the language revitalization process – see Chapter 13) is also an ethical question. Recorded materials might not belong to the community according to the letter of the law, but it does not change the fact that their content originates with them. Therefore the community may wish to receive it back. Recordings can easily be transferred to a hard drive and left in the community as a sort of incipient local archive. Vocabulary gathered can be typeset as a dictionary – even using a simple word processor, printing it in a print shop, and binding it at home. What counts above all are the content and the gestures. Communities may appreciate these ways of giving back much more than seeing a fancy hardcover book published after a few years by a big-name publisher. The same applies to older sources (such as archival documents or old recordings) as they might be useful in language revitalization. Community members often do not have access to those materials, either because they do not know where to find them or because the archives demand exorbitant prices for access to the copies. In these cases, giving someone, for example, a copy of an old record or a photo of their grandmother can do wonders for the collaboration. In all cases, however, when making such materials available, it is commendable to publish them in a language that the community will understand – not necessarily in the dominant one.

Ethics is also concerned with the problem of respect toward outsiders by community members and activists. Academics and other outsiders also have their rights, dreams, and sensitivities and they may be engaged and committed individuals with the best of motivations toward the community. They may also be vulnerable human beings. An ethical collaboration should be developed in both directions, especially when the future of an endangered language and community’s well-being are at stake.

The last, but by no means least important part of ethics in revitalization, is ethics toward oneself. The revitalization of Wymysiöeryś was something that the two Indigenous authors have for years treated as a ‘higher thing,’ having priority over all else. We often put revitalization before our private lives, sometimes working on it 24/7, even losing sleep. If this is your position, we don’t want to argue that you should step down and treat it just like a hobby (though if you already do so, it is also a viable position) but remember the ethics of working with yourself: respect yourself and do not burn yourself out as it won’t help the revitalization in any way. A healthy, well-rested, and positively minded person can do more for revitalization than one who is struggling to maintain a healthy work–life balance.

In the world of language revitalization, the importance of planning should never be underestimated; the need for good language planning is critical on many levels. Ideally communities who are engaged in reclaiming their languages should put a large-scale ‘strategic language plan’ in place. Such a plan specifies short- and long-term goals over several years and provides a structure within which to plan and implement a wide range of projects that support those goals. Within each project is a set of activities that help reach the goals for that project. However, as the well-known language revitalization expert, Leanne Hinton, has pointed out, this does not mean that a community needs to wait for such a large strategic plan to be in place before attempting any project. Every project aimed at language sustainability counts as a learning experience for all involved and will ideally serve to better inform and advance the efforts of the community.

Having an overarching strategic plan for a revitalization program contributes to the larger vision of language sustainability for the long term in important ways. But the careful planning of individual projects is equally important. Individual projects can be positioned and implemented to help best meet the long-term goals. The best language planning entails P-I-E (Planning, Implementation, Evaluation). Leanne Hinton credits Lucile Watahomogie, Hualapai educator and pioneer in language revitalization, with this approach, and it is certainly tried and true. Every individual project is best served if these three pieces are carefully put into place.

To focus on project planning, let’s begin by thinking about what a ‘project’ really is. At CoLang 2016 (Institute on Collaborative Language Research), Margaret Florey taught a course on project planning. Students were asked to generate ideas for projects. Here are a few of the ideas they shared:

• Start a Master-Apprentice Program.

• Record songs in my language.

• Create more language resources for my community.

• Develop a writing system for my language.

• Change the names of geographic landmarks in my community to their Indigenous names.

• Create an app for my language.

• Raise literacy efforts for my language.

• Start a language nest.

• Write a grammar.

• Make an online dictionary.

• Get young people involved in language work.

• Make signs and public materials in my language and more.

• Raise public awareness about Indigenous languages.

• Teach my language.

These are all good ideas for activities! But there are many more. Activities are initiated and sustained in accordance with the current needs of the specific community. Any given project may involve many activities. Remember that a project needs to be an achievable effort and planned to meet the language needs of the community.

Some of the ideas listed above may seem more like ‘projects’ to you than others. Strictly speaking, projects are a carefully planned set of activities within a specific time frame and with well-defined outcomes. Australian language activist Margaret Florey explains that a project must, ideally, have the following characteristics:

• definable and realistic goals,

• clear objectives,

• outcomes that can be measured,

• response to a specific need,

• fit into a larger strategic plan,

• an identifiable target audience, and

• a work plan with stages and a timeline and with an end date.

Planning a successful language revitalization project must entail, at least, the following steps:

Step 1: The beginning of any good project begins with a good idea. This is an idea that can be molded and shaped to fit the resources of the community and the capabilities of those involved. It is an idea that can be understood and shared with others and leads to something that will have understandable and useful outcomes when completed. A good idea, which motivates participants and guides the activities, can go a long way toward developing really important projects for communities. Such ideas are sometimes the work of a very motivated individual, or they may result from group meetings, committees, and the like. Regardless of its origin, a good idea is usually recognized by the excitement it generates. Community settings where ‘brainstorming’ is encouraged are good places to generate valuable ideas for language revitalization projects.

Designing such meetings to generate ideas is a process that can occur often in revitalization contexts and can breathe new life into existing projects as well as launch new and exciting ones. Start by asking broad, general questions like ‘What can we do that would help with our immediate goals?’ or ‘What activities do you want to see continued?’ – which may or may not be language-specific – and see where these lead. Perhaps it will become clear what is most important to community members, how they want to see language efforts proceed, and then more focused activities can be built around those interests.

Let’s further this discussion by generating a possible project. Let’s say that the community is very concerned about losing traditional agricultural practices. A language project might be initiated which would try to identify how much information about agriculture is in the existing documentation for the language. Maybe it would also be possible to document how agricultural activities are or were talked about. This would entail plant names and uses, terminology for tools, seasons, understanding how the labor was divided, planting methods and activities such as harvesting and related ceremonies. It might be good to ask who taught these traditional practices, and how. These kinds of information can be gathered through interviews with speakers, and added to what information is already documented. This could lead to the building of a large database of language related to agricultural practices that could then form the basis for generating materials for language teaching.

As well, any one of the above questions could lead to a specific project that would require all the same planning steps, on a smaller scale. For example, maybe, beginning language students could learn a short dialogue about planting seeds and learn to incorporate new vocabulary related to tools or agricultural practices. Perhaps students or teachers could create a children’s book about harvesting activities, or organize a field trip to agricultural areas and have a hands-on demonstration, augmented or immersed in relevant language about traditional food sources, etc. All of this, and more, could be generated from just one good idea!

Step 2: Decide what is already in place and what is needed. A project can be started by an individual or a group (such as a language committee), but in any case it should respond to what is already in place within a speaking community and propose what else might be needed. If possible, begin by writing up a ‘background’ statement, a ‘needs’ statement, and a ‘purpose’ statement. These can be as simple as saying ‘Our language has (x) remaining first language speakers. We need to start offering classes to adults to reclaim our language’. This last statement establishes both language status and existing work (and gives some background, need, and purpose). Then, look at what is specifically needed and propose how to accomplish it. For example, ‘To continue revitalizing our language, we need to create a language nest’ (or an online dictionary, or classes in schools, and so forth). These basic statements are important for several reasons: (1) they position the project you choose within any existing work that might be going on, (2) they form the base line information that will be needed for any proposals (grants or other funding requests), (3) they make clear the basic goal of the project and explain why it is needed to others in the community.

Step 3: Putting the idea into action. An idea is an abstract entity until it becomes a reality in the form of a serious project, which has expected tangible outcomes. This transformation usually happens when the interested parties begin to set specific goals. Goal setting is perhaps the most critical step in all language planning endeavors. It requires careful thinking and realistic considerations. If you are creating an overarching strategic plan, then you should think in terms of short-term goals such as: what can we accomplish in 6 months? 1 year? Or 2 years? And long-term goals like, what should have been accomplished by 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? Within each of those time frames would be a series of individual projects, also with goals. Within each project, there should be specific activities that will lead to the goal. This is a nested way of creating a framework to accomplish goals: the bottom tier are activities, which support a specific project, which forms a critical piece of the larger strategic plan.

Step 4: Outline your project. To help get started, write down the following things:

1. a. In a short paragraph, describe your project and give it a title. Write this as if you were trying to explain it to someone who knows nothing about it. This short paragraph is very important. It might become part of a grant proposal, part of a letter of request for help with your project, or the basic statement you use to tell everyone and anyone who needs to know what you are planning to do (maybe a tribal council? School officials? Funding agencies?). It should be concise and clear and begin with a sentence that states what the project is about, such as ‘The purpose of this project is _________’.

2. b. List the needs your project addresses. The needs that your project responds to can be one or many. Your project should, however, clearly respond to needs stated in the larger strategic language plan (if there is one) or at least needs that the community has already identified. There is always one very broad need: ‘We need to revitalize our language’. But individual projects respond to more specific needs. For example, a more specific need might be stated as, ‘We need to develop better teaching materials for the existing language revitalization classes’. Whatever the case, make it very clear which needs your project is addressing and as you write them down, explain why it is important to address these needs at this particular time.

3. c. Consider the target audience for your project. Having a clear idea of who the project is intended to serve will help shape the project and the activities needed to complete it. For example, if you are hoping to provide language classes to adults, your project resources, locations, and leaders will be different than if you are planning language classes for school children.

4. d. List at least three clear outcomes your project will achieve. Any journey is made easier if there is some clear idea of where it is leading you. Stating outcomes accomplishes several things:

   • It helps you plan for success.

   • It helps keep the project manageable (there should not be too many outcomes).

   • It informs people about the value of this project in terms of community goals for revitalization.

   • It sets up the structure needed to evaluate the project.

Well-established outcomes set the stage for more work – they create building blocks toward the larger, long-term goals.

1. e. List the steps needed to achieve these outcomes. When you are beginning to plan a project, it is helpful just to make lists of what you need or plan to do. These can be expanded, revised, and changed in a number of ways, but they give you an initial overall picture that is really important to have. That may seem like an obvious thing to say but really, at this point, what you are creating is an outlined plan of the project you have in mind. You need a complete plan, in outline form, to start with. It helps set a picture in the minds of you and your team of the project from beginning to end in its entirety.

Sometimes it is useful to create a project template, which can guide the outline/planning for any project and which includes at least the following items (as discussed above);

• Title of your project:

• Description of the project: (That short paragraph mentioned above).

• Purpose: (Why are you doing it?)

• Objectives: (What you hope to accomplish. These also appear as expected outcomes.)

• Activities: (How many? When? By whom?)

• Target Audience: (Who is the project intended for?)

• Dates: (When will it take place – beginning and end)

• Location: (Where? What community or facility?)

• Format: (Is it a class? A meeting? A workshop? A field trip?)

• Budget: (Plan for all of the costs)

• Partners: (Other organizations or groups to work with or who could be a resource)

• Funding: (Decide if you need a grant or can get donations in time or money)

• Marketing/Publicity: (How will you advertise this project? How will you recruit participants?)

• Evaluation/Assessment: (Both summative and formative)

1. f. Consider what resources will you need. It is one thing to have a good idea, and another thing to make your project happen smoothly. Any community-based project is dependent on the locally available resources. Is there someone or some group you might want to partner with? Resources can include people, equipment, food, teaching materials, travel vehicles, local institutions (schools, libraries, museums), and more. Anything that will help you develop and carry out your project is a ‘resource’. There may be additional resources available outside the community – maybe there is a nearby university, or museum, or help from other similar communities. Maybe, there are financial resources available in your state, province, district, county, or other government agencies at the federal or national level. Whatever funding you need to carry out your project will have to be secured. There may be funds available through your community-level government.

In the planning process, it is at this point that you need to consider how you will fund your project and how much it will all cost. You might consider a grant (unlike a loan, grants don’t have to be paid back). There are a number of online resources that can help you find grants that support specific types of work (see also Chapter 5). There are other options too – often local government and nonprofit organizations will help support community-based projects. Crowdfunding is also an option in some contexts. Remember that first paragraph you wrote describing your project? You can put it to use as a way to introduce what you want to do to people who might want to financially support it! It is also possible that people will be willing to donate – this is especially true when it comes to food. Most community events are more successful if there are, at the very least, refreshments involved. As you plan, the need for food, the amount, source, and type must also be taken into account. Plan carefully for anything that might incur costs: food, salaries, honoraria, meeting space, travel, materials, equipment, etc.

1. g. Create a potential timeline with a clear beginning and end dates – be realistic because an individual project is usually part of a bigger strategic plan. Creating a realistic timeline is critical. There may be several projects launched at the same time which need to be articulated together. Even if that’s not the case, planning a project around a timeline is very useful. It allows for a clear beginning and a clear ending. This helps all those involved understand what is expected of them over the course of the project. The timeline should allow for a planning stage, an implementation phase, and an evaluation phase. Again, these three things – P-I-E – compose the foundation of any project.

Step 5: Implement your project: On the surface, implementing you project should be as simple as following the plan. However, we all know that things don’t always go as planned. As you begin to implement your project, remember to be flexible, ready to make changes as you go, and keep track of the challenges you face. The first time through any endeavor may be a bit rough – there is always a lot to learn. Be sure you have some alternative choices such as other possible locations to hold activities, a longer list of resource people than you actually need, be ready to change activities, if needed, but not to the extent that you lose sight of your original goals. You have carefully outlined and developed Plan ‘A’ – make sure to also have a Plan ‘B’ – a set of possible alternative activities if others fail. If carefully outlined, the implementation of a project should go smoothly.

Step 6: Plan how you will evaluate or assess your project. Ask what assessment strategies will you use? There are both formal and informal approaches to assessment. Both can be formative (used to provide feedback as the project moves forward and they help shape the project – this is information that contributes to the formation of the project) or summative (done near the end of a project to provide feedback on the entire results of the project). Generally, a formal assessment means that you choose to involve someone unrelated to the project, an objective observer, to do an ‘external’ evaluation. This might be someone who does similar projects in other communities, or a professional who is familiar with language projects. Formal evaluations are sometimes costly and therefore may occur just once near the end of a project. It’s good to do a formal evaluation if you need to prove the worth of your project for large grants or other major sources of funding. For the purposes of the community, informal evaluations are always important. These are done by the project organizers or even by the project participants and take the form of a casual questionnaire or verbal feedback. Informal evaluations can occur at any stage during a project and should occur whether or not a formal evaluation is planned.

Finally, the project director or coordinator and the project team need to do their own evaluation. Take time to look back on various aspects of the project. Consider what worked well, what didn’t and why. Write it all down so that if you decide to repeat the project it will probably go smoother than it did the first time. It is crucial to take the time to review the strengths and weaknesses of the project, as a project team, and to discuss what the next steps should be. Remember that revitalizing a language is just a step toward sustaining it for a very long time. Consider how your project has contributed to this effort and how will it lead to other projects aimed at this same long-range goal.

Language revitalization or reclamation takes a lot of commitment, vision, and just plain hard work. It really never ends so it is important to keep generating fresh ideas and implementing new projects. Projects should connect with each other or build on each other as they are all, ultimately, supporting the same long-range goal of keeping the language alive.

In the course of developing an endangered language revitalization project, one must eventually face the most basic of logistical problems: how to pay for it? The costs associated with language revitalization projects vary greatly depending on their size, duration, goals, and products. Some involve the creation and publication of dictionaries, educational materials, or websites, while others require expensive technical equipment. Salaries for community language experts, travel budgets, and space rentals (or even the construction of a language center) can also be important investments.

As the field of language revitalization has become increasingly visible over the last couple of decades, new avenues of funding have emerged to meet these costs. However, the demand for funding has grown just as quickly as the supply, and the competition remains stiff. Long-term funding remains difficult to secure. Furthermore, while the process of applying for academic research grants regarding endangered languages is, by now, relatively formalized and streamlined, funding for community-based work often comes from a wide variety of places and can be difficult to identify.

This chapter offers some practical guidance for funding language revitalization projects. Consistent with the handbook’s orientation, this chapter focuses on support for the work of language activists and community members. However, since language revitalization efforts are often closely related to language documentation, these two fields are considered together where appropriate. This chapter is divided into two parts: (1) identifying sources of funding and (2) how to write an effective proposal.

Identifying Sources of Funding

Many language revitalization programs are sustained by a mix of funding sources. This is because the available funds tend to be small, and because they are usually limited in duration. For language revitalization, which is a long-term process that takes place over generations, the short-term nature of most grants and fellowships presents a particular problem. Some funding sources are limited to citizens of particular countries or members of particular tribes or ethnic groups, others are open to students or members of academic institutions, and a few have no eligibility restrictions at all. In cases where language documentation and revitalization efforts are linked, it can be helpful to consider how to make academic research funding work in the service of language revitalization. For instance, some major research funders in Europe and the USA inquire about a project’s ‘broader impacts’, defined by the National Science Foundation (US) as ‘the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes’.Footnote ¹ Language revitalization certainly qualifies as one such broader impact in many academic projects (though, despite these stated goals, some funders limit the amount of money that can actually be used to support revitalization efforts). Alliances with universities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and businesses can also be fruitful, while in other cases, informal fundraising through games and contests (e.g. raffles and bingo) and online crowd funding has proven effective. A good place to start in the search for potential funding sources is to research or contact other successful language revitalization programs, and to learn about how they acquired their funding.

To begin with, a handful of funding organizations specifically devoted to endangered languages have been established in recent decades. While some of these organizations only support language documentation, the Endangered Language Fund (ELF) and the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) also accept proposals for language revitalization projects. The first organization is particularly committed to funding collaborations between communities and university researchers. However, these organizations make small grants (~$2,000–$4,000 for ELF, ~$1,000 for FEL), and even these can be quite competitive. ELF also offers larger scholarships for members of some US tribes seeking academic training in linguistics, which is another important mode of community–university partnership.

Some government bodies offer larger grants for language revitalization, though these are more common in the USA and Canada than in other countries. For instance, the Administration for Native Americans, part of the US federal government, supports ‘the planning, designing, restoration, and implementing of native language curriculum and education projects to support a community’s language preservation goals’.Footnote ² Similarly Canada’s Aboriginal People’s Program offers one funding program for ‘the preservation and revitalization of Indigenous languages through community-based projects and activities’, and another for ‘the production and distribution of Indigenous audio and video content’.Footnote ³ One benefit of these funding sources is that they offer larger quantities of money than the small NGOs mentioned above. More specific opportunities are offered by other institutions, such as the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Community Research Program, which funds visits by community members to ‘examine cultural objects, biological specimens, and archival documents related to their heritage language and knowledge systems, and engage in a dialogue with each other and with Smithsonian staff, as part of a process to revitalize their language and knowledge’.

Moving beyond funding sources that are explicitly designated for language revitalization, communities and activists need to be creative. Local, national, and international NGOs that might be receptive to the issue, but had not considered it before, are a good possibility. Communities can create their own NGOs, which can be an important step in applying for funding. Tribal funds often support language revitalization programs in the USA. Collaborations with educational institutions can be helpful as well. For instance, an innovative partnership between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University operates a successful program to ‘assist tribal educational initiatives aimed at the preservation of language and culture’ while ‘expos[ing] undergraduate and graduate students at Miami University to tribal efforts in language and cultural revitalization’.Footnote ⁴ In some cases, speakers and language activists have gotten grants and fellowships to study and support their languages within academic institutions. Other communities might benefit from local trust funds, or companies with funds for local initiatives.

Some language revitalization projects do not require large budgets for their operations. In these cases, communities might be able to cover their costs through crowd funding. For instance, a group of students at SOAS raised more than £2,000 for a storybook in the Sylheti language (spoken in Bangladesh and India, as well as in European cities), an illustrated version of a children’s story told by Sylheti speakers in London. In another case, at the time of writing, members of the Okanagan Salish language revitalization program had raised a few thousand dollars for the construction of a small, new modular building on the website www.gofundme.com. Some efforts, such as community conversation clubs or master-apprentice programs, may require no more than a bit of funding for administrative time to match lists of potential participants. Fundraising efforts need not be digital – some revitalization programs are supported by the kinds of games and contests mentioned above. These modes of fundraising have the additional benefits of raising awareness of the language revitalization program and involving the wider community. Some communities have also generated revenue by offering language courses and extended visits to non-community members.

Writing a Good Proposal

The procedures for acquiring language revitalization funding are as diverse as the sources themselves. Some of the funding sources described above require detailed proposals, while others just involve informal coordination among a few community members. This section considers the requirements of funding institutions that review formal proposals. These tend to be organized around a few common elements. First, reviewers must determine whether the project is likely to have a significant impact, whether it is more important and urgent than the many other proposals they’re considering, and whether it is well designed and ethical. Second, they need to know about the applicant(s) and their relationship to the community, and whether they have the experience, personal and institutional contacts, permissions, approvals, and other bureaucratic prerequisites that are necessary to complete the project as it is described. Third, they will examine the budget and determine whether it is appropriate, and if so, whether it is a ‘good deal’ in light of the anticipated outcomes of the project. Finally, they will consider whether your project furthers the specific goals of the funding institution, which vary greatly from one to the next.

Given the demanding and highly competitive nature of this process, applying for funding can feel like entering a hopeless bureaucratic labyrinth. However, one point of consolation is that there is not, in fact, much difference between preparing an effective project and preparing an effective funding application. If your project is worthwhile, carefully planned, and consistent with the goals of the funding institution, and if it enjoys the support of the community, all that remains is to convey these facts through clear writing. Conversely, a funding application can be a helpful tool for thinking through the practical aspects of your project. Just as importantly, some funders provide reviewers’ feedback to the applicants, whether or not the application is approved. Receiving the thorough and candid assessment of a panel of experts is a rare and precious opportunity (even if it can sting a bit). If you receive feedback, you should use it to help improve your project.

Funding applications vary greatly in their details, particularly in a field like language revitalization that draws in money from a range of sources. However, applications tend to ask for a few general types of information, along the lines of what is mentioned above. I now take a closer look at three of these: the value and design of the project, the applicant’s connection to the work, and the adequacy of the budget.

Is This a Good Project?

If a funding institution accepts formal proposals and consults reviewers, the first question that a reviewer will need to consider is whether the project itself is worth funding: is it important, feasible, ethical, and likely to generate valuable outcomes and impacts?

To begin with, how important or urgent are the outcomes that the proposal promises? For example, a language revitalization project might have an impact on a critical situation of language endangerment, or its value might lie more in developing new methods or technologies, or in moving the broader field forward in some other way (such as an attitude study). Institutions that fund language documentation efforts sometimes try to prioritize work on the most critically endangered languages, particularly in cases where little high-quality documentation already exists. Your proposal should have some substantive and clearly defined practical outcome, and you should explain it in as few words as possible at the beginning of the project description. Identifying the planned outcomes requires a good sense of the situation on the ground, and it is also helpful to demonstrate knowledge of how language revitalization projects have worked in other places and how these might be relevant to your project. In the case of a project with an academic dimension, it is important to demonstrate a strong command of the relevant scholarly literature.

Once you have identified a clear and substantive goal, reviewers will want to see that you have thought through what is required to achieve it: your methodology. What kind of work will need to be done, and who will do it? For a language revitalization project, what kind of activities will you engage in (e.g. training workshops, the development of educational materials or a website), and what kinds of technical considerations will they require? If the project involves documentation, what kinds of data will you collect, and how do these data relate to your aims? Will you make audio or video recordings? Of what, and how many? How will you select the participants? How will you obtain their informed consent? How will you process the material, and with what kinds of software? What other practical considerations might be relevant? Do the planned activities fulfill your desired outcomes? Is your timeline feasible? In all cases, the methodologies that you propose must be tightly connected to the goals.

One of the most common problems with funding applications is that they often promise too much. Reviewers want to know that you are motivated and ambitious, but that you are realistic about the logistical constraints of the work. For instance, don’t assume that you will be able to implement a large and well-functioning revitalization program right away (see Chapter 4 on planning a revitalization project). Nor, in a documentation project, are you likely to arrive somewhere you’ve never been before, encounter a language for the first time, and return home after a few months with a large corpus (body) of data and a sophisticated grasp of the language. The best way to develop a feasible agenda is to approach it step by step, with an exploratory or pilot first phase, and elaborating or expanding the work over longer periods. This will reassure reviewers that you know what you are getting yourself into.

Projects that involve scholarly research with living humans, and that are conducted under the auspices of an educational institution, usually require the approval of an ethical review board before you can begin the work (see Chapter 3 on ethical considerations). Projects through NGOs or communities generally do not require such approval, but it is still important to think through how you will conduct your project ethically. If your project is subject to an ethical review board, you will need to explain how you will go about getting informed consent from anyone you record or video, protecting their anonymity, and storing the data. These must be developed in close coordination with community members, and must be responsive to local expectations about privacy and research ethics. These procedures can take some time, so be sure to get started early.

Finally, reviewers will want to know what the products and outcomes of the project will be. Will you publish educational materials, or will a training program for community language workers be established? Will you organize a radio program, or add to the community’s digital presence in the language? If you conduct academic research, some funding institutions require that you deposit the products of your research with them, including recordings and field notes. It is also good practice to make those products available to the community, for instance at a local library, school, or community center. Some funders may ask you to adhere to Open Access archiving standards, by which data must be publicly available on the Internet (a requirement that must be made clear to the participants before the project begins). Demonstrate that you are aware of such policies, and that you are prepared to abide by them in a way that is consistent with your plan for ethical research.

What Is the Applicant’s Relationship to the Project and the Community?

Once a reviewer has considered the value of the proposed project, they must next consider the applicant. Applicants who are community members themselves have a clear connection to the work, as well as a personal investment, base of knowledge, and network of contacts that will help the project succeed. Meanwhile scholars who are not part of the community will have to demonstrate that they have the support and approval of the community, the relevant academic training, official government permissions, and ethical approval, and that all manner of other practical aspects of the work are in place.

Many applicants for language revitalization and documentation grants are affiliated with local NGOs, tribal governments, or language support groups; some are simply individual community members. Others are affiliated with universities, particularly as MA or PhD students. In all of these cases, it is important to demonstrate one’s preparation for the project at hand, whatever that might be. If the application requires letters of recommendation, these will attest to this sort of preparation. It may also be helpful to demonstrate your personal experience with the cultural, scholarly, and methodological issues at stake. Have you worked with the revitalization program already, and in what capacity? What kinds of work have already been carried out in the community, and how does this project build on them?

For noncommunity members, a crucial part of preparing for some fieldwork projects is attaining the kinds of local permissions necessary for the research. For instance, nontribal members who work on a Native North American language usually need an official invitation from a tribal government, and failing to follow the proper procedures on such matters can derail the project. In some places in the world, e.g. Vanuatu, you might also need a visa or other sort of permission from an embassy or a local government. Some grants also require affiliation with a local university or other institutions. To avoid complications down the road, some funding agencies require that you submit copies of some types of permissions with your application.

Does the Budget Look Right?

Every proposal requires a budget, in which you give a detailed itemization and justification of your expenses. Some funding institutions give small grants to cover a plane ticket or the printing of education materials; others give huge grants that pay the costs of graduate school or the salaries of several people for years. The parts of the budget relating to the work itself are a concrete expression of your methodology, so you should make sure that the expenditures you list (equipment, personnel, etc.) are closely connected to the activities you describe in the proposal. Most funders provide information about what they expect to see in their budget categories. It can also be helpful to use a colleague’s successful grant application as a guide as you draw up your budget.

Funding institutions categorize expenses in different ways, but there tend to be some general similarities. In the box below are some of the most common categories, with brief explanations of each.

Part of preparing a feasible project is requesting enough money to cover all of the relevant costs. For this reason, you shouldn’t cut corners or compromise on important expenses. However, keep in mind that funding is tight, so unnecessary costs might take away from someone else’s project, and will likely be noticed during the review process.