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Am currently sitting listening to the introductory remarks for Linguistic Field Methods, the unit I've been looking forward to doing for, literally, years.
Linguistic Field Methods is a 12-point unit, which means it's equivalent to two normal units. John (the lecturer) just said that "of all the 12-point units in the known universe, this is the most twelve-pointy". He's explaining that it's a lot of collective involvement, which makes sense, because of what this unit is about.
What it is is this: Working with a fluent speaker of an unfamiliar language, develop a grammar and dictionary of the language. Objectives also include demonstrating an understanding of the ethical and political issues involved in linguistic field research.
I suspect that our speaker will be the lecturer, and the language will be Arrernte - John's area is Aboriginal languages and his particular work has been with Arrernte - but so far he's just talked about "the speaker", so it might be someone else, we'll see.
I've been looking forward to this unit so much because it's real linguistics - the reason I haven't done it is yet is that it has heavy-duty prerequisites and I only finished those last semester. You need to have finished acquiring a comprehensive grounding in linguistic theory and foundations of grammar, phonetics, phonology, all of it, and now what we are doing is learning to do what's necessary to document a language from scratch.
At least two of the Linguistics lecturers I've had did their Ph.D. doing just that. Documenting languages that previously hadn't ever been described, that didn't have dictionaries or grammars recorded. Shelly did his on Gilbertese, a language in the Gilbert Islands, and joked about how it was the best job in the world. Gilbertese people apparently don't place a lot of emphasis on punctuality, so he spent a lot of time reading books on a tropical beach under a palm tree while he waited for people who'd agreed to come talk to him to arrive. (Field research is about the natural forms of the language, so natural settings are preferred.)
Introducing some books on the topic: "If you're not going into the field, some of this may seem a bit over the top - you'll laugh and say, 'Why would I need to take webbing and a revolver?' You'd be surprised... The Anthropology Department at Sydney uni used to have an armoury. Cool, huh? We don't have one of those any more, we just have Frequent Flyer points."
And, wow, we have readings. I've never had one of those for a Linguistics unit before. Fortunately I'm also a History major, accustomed to 300 pages plus a week, so I laugh derisively at this "a chapter" crap. (This unit is going to be a lot of work, but that's more from an actual scientific work perspective.)
Discussing time in "the field", John pointed out that it can involve going to extremely remote communities, but he himself did his in Alice Springs, which has all the amenities you might want for a "middle-class bourgeoisie experience".
Ah, looks like it'll be someone Not Him - it seems that the way they get their native speakers of interesting languages is to advertise with the post-graduate students for a volunteer. This being a university with plenty of international students, they apparently always get a range of remarkable languages to choose from (heavily-documented languages being boring, of course, and languages we students are likely to speak are quite useless). Our native speaker is "a teacher" and "working on a Master's", so there will be some educated-person bias in what we get, but I gather they're a very nice person. (Will meet them at 2pm, in our first elicitation session.)
I find myself thinking about the ethical and political issues of language documentation in general. Suzette Haden Elgin wrote a story about it - one of the few linguistics-based stories I've ever read - which I recommend to pretty much anyone, because it actually touches on the link between language and identity, colonialism and power, all of that.
There's this odd thing about language documentation. It's a process that more-or-less depends on outsiders describing the native speakers' language for them. It can't be done from within a community, because a native speaker has all sorts of biases of which they're unaware. (Yes, including English speakers - a lot of the vital work on English has been done by non-native English speakers, many of them French.)
It has to involve them - primary linguistic data, as the slide currently on show says, means spoken/written/signed language produced by competent speakers/signers of the language. But the linguist is going to be an outsider.
Which, in a lot of cases, is just going to throw up issues of colonialism and appropriation, because trained linguists are likely to be from somewhat privileged backgrounds - after all, linguistics is something of a luxury science. It's useful, and I do genuinely believe that it contributes to the general improvement of the world, but languages aren't necessarily a priority in areas that are disadvantaged in immediate, dangerous ways.
At the same time, I think recording languages is vitally important. Not just for "omg science" purposes, not even just because of my generalised love of languages. Language is a part of cultural identity, and there have already been too many languages lost because they were never recorded, and when they were at the brink, there was no recourse for people who wanted to keep them alive. The languages that have recovered from seeming doom, like Welsh, did so partly from an enthusiastic, dedicated program to keep it alive, and partly because the resources existed.
I've read a book about near-extinct languages, too, which is at my parents' house - I'll look up the title when I have internet again. (As I write this paragraph, I'm at a bus stop. I forgot to pack lunch today, and so I'm going home for food - which will also allow me to trade the library books in my bag for my camera, since the weather has turned sunny and rather beautiful, and taking photos assuages my stress levels, but this morning it was raining and my bag was already heavy.) If I forget to edit it in replacing this sentence before I post, and you're interested, poke me for it.
There's an Aboriginal language that, as of a few years ago, had two surviving fluent speakers left. Both were elderly. The woman had some grandchildren who'd picked up a few words, but no more; they had difficulty learning fluency, really, because they didn't grow up hearing conversations in the language. You see, the two speakers couldn't talk to each other due to a tribal taboo.
Dead language walking.
If the language were recorded, when they were older, the children would have the choice of reclaiming it - remembering how it sounded, they could learn the words and how to use them from the records. Or their descendants could, if the children didn't - it would still be there, waiting, an important part of their culture, waiting for them to want it enough to take it.
I think that matters. But there's an element of luxury in my conviction of the necessity of language, because my native language is English, and English is currently unthreatened and has a vast and well-recorded canon, established worldwide through a deliberate cultural colonialism. (No, really. It's one of the things that I found researching my essay that's going to be an important part of it. Quite early in the establishment of the British Empire, various figures were already discussing the likelihood that, like all empires before it, theirs would come to an end. In order to establish the British Empire as one as influential and memorable as the Roman Empire, they decided that, like the Romans, they should establish their cultural canon as the standard across the globe. What somewhat frightens me is the degree to which they succeeded. Shakespeare, Dickens, and everyone in between are The Classics everywhere the British had dominion, pretty much.)
I could make an argument that I could also lay a claim to Afrikaans, which half my ancestry spoke, but it would feel like a reach. I feel no real connection to that side of my family, and the only things I know how to say in Afrikaans are extremely insulting. (Rough translations: "Shut the fuck up" and "Go fuck yourself". Less carnal reference, as it happens - equivalence of sentiment, not literal translation here. Literal translations are "shut your mouth (using the word for the mouth of an animal") and "your hole in a can".)
Anyway, to return to my point, more or less - where a problem sets in somewhat with this is that most linguistics are white men from Europe and America. Which raises nasty spectres, you know?
I think there was more where I was going with this, but I'm now picking it up a number of hours later, when I'm completely exhausted, and I'm going to crash.
Hopefully tonight I'll find energy to do some more work. Among other things, like studying for Friday's exams, I have the first part of my workbook for Field Methods to do. The workbook is an all-semester running assessment thing, which he'll ask for every couple of weeks, and first hand-in point is tomorrow, on the third day of the semester; a background profile of the language we'll be working on and the socio-economic, geopolitical, etc, environment it comes from.
(It's a language from Bhutan. More detail, I don't doubt, will accrue in this journal.)
As I will be keeping my workbook on my laptop, rather than in an actual notebook, just about guaranteed, I have already made arrangements with John, the lecturer, for how we'll work this: when handing in, I print and submit any new material, and make a copy of the whole thing available for his access online. (Him: "Have you got a website?" I was very relieved to be able to reply with a cheerful yes, since for some years now, until a couple of months ago, I had online journals, but not an actual website where I could put things like pdf files, whereas now I very much do.)
I find myself vaguely wondering if I want to do postgrad in Linguistics after all, as I once planned. There's a certain appeal to a career path that could include sentences like: "Make sure you keep the solar panels of your satellite phone charged, in case you need to call for an emergency medical evacuation by helicopter. We can get that to you in about two days, at a cost of $27,000." But I'm more of a natural at history...
We'll see how I go with this unit, I think. If doing real Linguistics work, rather than cranking through theory, goes well for me, it changes things a bit.
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Today/tonight's frustration:
I missed the first ten minutes of my first elicitation class, where the class met Sampa, our native speaker of a language from Bhutan. The section with his speaking was recorded, but the recording is quite quiet on my laptop's built-in speakers, and currently the line-out/headphone jacks aren't working. (Have not yet succeeded in determining why that is. *sigh*) So I can't plug it directly into any other speakers. I can connect to Chas's bluetooth-enabled speaker, but Dean is currently using that.
*takes deep breaths*
And I'm a little fragile right now.
Still, some creative googling - and I had to be creative, because there's not a lot online about a language about which almost nothing has ever been written - finally established the name of the language: Sharchopka. I haven't managed to place the town Sampa's from, but I have a more general idea of what's going on, here - which I need, as I have to do a basic profile of Eastern Bhutan by 2pm tomorrow.
First impressions of the language: I suspect aspiration on /p/ and /b/ is significant, which makes me whimper quietly in my head, because it's an area where I have only slightly less trouble than I do with the extended range of clicks in Bantu languages.
On the bright side, it's nontonal, which is good, because tonal languages make me cry deep, deep in my confused place. Probably more exposure would mean I could get something closer to the hang of them, but as it is... oh, god, basically.
Right now I'm reading the CIA World Factbook entry on Bhutan and setting up my workbook for the unit.
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