International Polar Year 2007-2008
To facilitate the submission of arctic social science and humanities proposals to the International Council for Science (ICSU) for prospective endorsement as IPY projects, IASSA has launched an initiative to create a vigorous exchange of ideas, discussion, and active communication. The following was submitted to IASSA on its form at IASSA IPY Facilitation Initiative:

Lawrence Kaplan and Maria Hilden: Language Planning for Eskimo-Aleut languages as perceived by their speech communities
Lawrence Kaplan, Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, ffldk@uaf.edu, with Maria Hilden, Roskilde University Center, Denmark, the.bean@get2net.dk.

We will seek partnerships for similar work in Inuit communities in Greenland, Canada, and possibly Siberia.

Project Summary:
The purpose of this project is to find out how members of the Aleut and Eskimo speech communities see the future of their local native language. How do they experience the relative importance of the local language and what role would they like the local language to play? What role do they see as realistic and how is this goal to be reached? We envision a project including speech communities in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and perhaps Siberia, depending on interest among scholars and language users in those countries. We hope to learn about the views of ‘ordinary’ language users on the future role of their local native language. Few people are used to thinking and talking about these issues, however, and we will have to seek the assistance of local language experts and linguists.

The following procedure is contemplated for eliciting language attitudes from speech communities in Alaska:
(1) Aleut and Eskimo college students can be introduced to the basics of language planning in classes, where they will participate in discussions of the roles played by the local native language and English in the community.

(2) Students will fill out questionnaires concerning language competence and usage, along with questions about age, sex, ancestry, occupation etc.

(3) Students are given an assignment to describe:
(i) what the local native language means to them personally and to the community at large,
(ii) the role they would want the language to play in the community in future,
(iii) how that role is to be attained, and
(iv) how the speech community can control such a planning process.

(4) The project group identifies views and themes in the assignments and questionnaires and develops interview guides.

(5) Students are interviewed in groups by a member of the project group and a local native partner. The interviews elicit discussions of:
(i) the relative importance of the local native language,
(ii) its future role in the speech community,
(iii) how that future role is to be achieved, and
(iv) how the speech community can stay in control of such a process. Alternatively, students select a group of (non-academic) persons from their language community whom they interview about issues (i) to (iv). The interviewees should be ‘ordinary’ language users who are known to have views on these matters and are known to be able to put them into words. The interviewing student is supervised by a member of the project group.

Broader Merit:
The project will provide the speech communities studied with language planning competencies and aims to start local discussions of language status planning. Thus, the project seeks to enable Native communities to reflect on and gain control over language policy affecting their own communities.

Interested Participants:
1. Louis-Jacques Dorais, Professor of Anthropology, Université Laval, Canada.
2. Karen Langgaard, linguist, University of Greenland.

Sincere thanks to the U.S. National Science Foundation for support for the IASSA IPY facilitation initiative.

Questions? Contact Anne Sudkamp at <fyiassa@uaf.edu>.

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 This page was last modified October 24, 2005 by Anne Sudkamp