autumn 2019 LIN-8010 MultiLing and UiT PhD Summer School 2019: Revitalisation and reclamation of Indigenous and minoritised languages - 5 ECTS

Application deadline

Application deadline June 1st. 

Application code 9302 in Søknadsweb.


Type of course

The course may be taken as a single course. There is no course fee, but participants will have to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Admission requirements

The participants must be enrolled in a PhD program in linguistics or a related field of study. If you are unsure whether your research would fit within the scope of the course, please contact the organizers to discuss.

All applicants are kindly asked to submit (together with their application):

  • A 250-word description of the data and method(s) that they would like to present for discussion during the course. The students will be asked to give a short presentation introducing their study and a challenge they have encountered, and discussing it in the light of relevant publications on the reading list for the course.
  •  A brief letter of recommendation from their supervisor indicating that the course is relevant for the applicant.

The course has 16 seats. If the number of applicants exceeds the number of places available on the PhD course, applicants will be ranked from category 1 to 2.

Category 1: People admitted to the PhD Programme at UiT and MultiLing/UiO

Category 2: Doctoral students from other universities

Early registration in encouraged as the course will be filled on a first-come first-served basis.


Course content

The United Nations has declared 2019 the year of Indigenous Languages; meanwhile numerous communities still experience prejudice and pressure to abandon their heritage languages and are working to reclaim or revitalise these languages through their personal practices. This PhD course will examine language revitalization and reclamation from different perspectives, including both Indigenous and other minoritised contexts. Additionally, the sometimes-fraught relationship between research and activism around Indigenous and minoritised languages will be explored.

Indigenous and minoritised groups have been disadvantaged through colonialism and other exploitative political processes, leading to numerous social and psychological impacts, including language shift. The concept of minority or minoritised language is an expression of relations among groups and not an inherent or essential quality of a language or group.

The endangerment of Indigenous and minoritised languages has been analysed from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including sociolinguistics, language policy, anthropological linguistics, language socialization, applied linguistics and documentary linguistics. As Hinton, Huss and Roche (2018) note in the recent Handbook of Language Revitalization, there are multiple terms for the range of efforts which aim to stop language shift, including language revitalization, reclamation, maintenance, revival, and reversing language shift. In this course we will consider the range of "activities designed not only to maintain but also to increase the presence of an endangered or dormant language in the speech community and/or the lives of individuals" (Hinton, Huss & Roche, 2018, p. xxvi), and examine some of the key theoretical approaches to understanding processes of language shift and revitalization. Political approaches to language revitalization (such as UN declarations), linguistic approaches (such as language documentation), applied linguistic or educational approaches (such as language teaching and learning) and sociolinguistic and anthropological approaches (such as identification, group belonging, negotiation of norms and the role of new speakers) will be considered and evaluated in relation to different socio-political contexts. 


Objectives of the course

The students have the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

The student has:

  • gained an overview of the development of language revitalization as a field of enquiry

Skills

The student is able to / can:

  • discuss and evaluate central theories, concepts and methods in the field of language revitalization and reclamation, with a particular emphasis on fieldwork based studies and the role of the researchers working in minoritised communities

engage in discussions about how to move the field forward


Language of instruction and examination

English

Teaching methods

This is a 5-day intensive course: Aug. 12 - Aug. 16. 2019. The program will consist of lectures in the morning by the invited experts and the organisers, and short student presentations followed by discussions in the afternoon. The students will send in an abstract for their presentation in advance (see "Assessment and exam" below) and they will each have an opponent from among the other students as well as from one of the lecturers.

Main lecturers:

Leanne Hinton (University of California, Berkeley)

Hanna Outakoski (Umeaå University)

Lecturers and organizers:

Pia Lane (UiO, MultiLing)

Haley De Korne (UiO, MultiLing)

Hilde Sollid (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

Åse Mette Johansen (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

All courses will be evaluated once during the period of the study program. The board of the program decides which courses will be evaluated by students and teacher each year.  


Assessment

The following coursework requirements must be completed and approved in order to take the final exam:

Participants will be expected to complete readings prior to the course, and to participate with an individual presentation, peer feedback, and group discussions during the course.

The exam will consist of:

All applicants are kindly asked to submit (together with their application) a 250-word description of the data, method(s), and concepts that they would like to present for discussion during the course. The students will be asked to give a short presentation introducing their study and a challenge they have encountered, and discussing it in the light of relevant publications on the reading list for the course.

The exam will be assessed on a Pass/Fail basis.


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  • About the course
  • Campus: Tromsø |
  • ECTS: 5
  • Course code: LIN-8010