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1. Training communities in documentation and technology: The Language Documentation Training Center model

   Sou, Jennifer; Pappas, Leah; Khairunnisa; Holton, Gary (August 2023, Language documentation and conservation)

   Language documentation is increasingly seen as a collaborative process, engaging community members as active participants. Collaborative research produces better documentation that is valuable for both the academic community and the speakers. However, in many communities, speakers and language advocates lack the skills necessary to fully engage in collaborative projects. One way to overcome this barrier is to provide language documentation training to community members. Such training should teach participants how to ethically and comprehensively complete every stage of the documentation process while offering opportunity for theoretical discussion and practical application. In this paper, we offer one possible model for community-based training in language documentation and conservation that focuses on bidirectional learning and capacity building. We describe a training workshop that was held in 2018 in Kupang, the capital of Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) province. A collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i, Leiden University, and Artha Wacana Christian University, this workshop implemented a model based on the practices of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC), an organization devoted to training speakers to document their own languages. We detail the NTT workshop itself, summarize post-workshop feedback, and offer suggestions to others looking to provide similar training in speaker communities. 

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2. Sociolinguistics and language shift: toward understanding the processes of shift through the prism of speakers

   https://doi.org/10.37892/2713-2951  

   Lenore Grenoble (January 2021, Sociolingvistika)

   The study of language shift, the replacement of one language by another in a community, or subgroup of a speech community, is a prime topic for sociolinguistic analysis: shift is almost always the result of social factors. This paper argues for focusing research on the study of shift in process and, to that end, studying the different kinds of speakers in shifting communities. The prevalent response to massive, global language shift by linguists is language documentation. Although the need for documentation is clear, there have been inadvertent consequences: valorizing last speakers, promoting linguistic purism, and devaluing L2 language learners who, in many communities, represent the future of the language. The urgency of documenting and describing languages with relatively small numbers of elderly speakers has led the linguistic community to focus almost exclusively on such groups and ignore both larger speech communities in earlier stages of shift, and overlook the wide range of speaker types in shift communities. From a social standpoint, the result is that we are often failing to do the language work in precisely those communities where reversing language shift is still relatively easy. From a scientific standpoint, we are missing the opportunity to study language change in process, and missing the chance to study speaker variation in a shift situation. Variation in proficiency and performance across shifting speakers is not random but systematic and correlates with a set of social and cognitive factors. 

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3. Motivating the Documentation of the Verbal Arts: Arguments from Theory and Practice

   Fitzgerald, Colleen M (March 2017, Language documentation and conservation)

   For language documentation to be sufficiently extensive to cover a given com- munity’s language practices (cf. Himmelmann 1998), then including verbal arts is essential to ensure the richness of that comprehensive record. The verbal arts span the creative and artistic uses of a given language by speakers, such as storytelling, songs, puns and poetry. In this paper, I demonstrate the significance of verbal arts documentation in three other ways. Drawing from Indigenous language community contexts in the United States, I describe how the verbal arts are relevant to linguistic theory, revitalization and training. First, the influence by verbal arts on phonological theory is attested, affirming that the collection and analysis of verbal arts data plays a significant role in the phonological analysis of a given language and in theories of phonology. Second, the verbal arts generate extremely useful examples in training models for language work, since such examples can be used to cultivate phonological awareness in learners and teachers. Third, the verbal arts provide culturally meaningful materials for language revitalization. 

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4. Northern Arapaho Language Revitalization with Virtual Reality

   https://doi.org/10.1353/nai.2023.0002  

   Kelly, Phineas; Caskey Russell, Chris (March 2023, Native American and Indigenous Studies)

   In cooperation with elders of the Northern Arapaho Language and Culture Commission (NALCC), a language revitalization project using virtual reality is being developed, supported by a National Science Foundation grant. The origins of the project are explored, underlying methodologies examined, as well as the important role that the elders of the Northern Arapaho Language and Culture Commission play in guiding the goals of the grant: (a) exploring the potentials of virtual reality in language revitalization; (b) documenting spoken Arapaho language with an emphasis on hunting and animal migration stories and songs related to place names on the Wind River Indian Reservation and other locations in Wyoming and Colorado; and (c) developing virtual reality curricula units for Wind River Indian reservation K–12 schools. Difficulties in conducting research during the covid19 pandemic, especially with Indigenous communities that have been hit hard by the virus, impacted our methodology and project process. This project seeks to provide a blueprint for other scholars interested in working with tribes and grant agencies in using VR in language revitalization. The project engages the questions if and how VR and subsequent technologies can be used as decolonial tools to help reverse language loss and promote culture. 

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5. Students’ Feedback About Their Experiences in EPICS Using Natural Language Processing

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962557  

   Anakok, I.; Woods, J.; Huerta, M.; Schoepf, J.; Murzi, H.; Katz, A. (October 2022, IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference)

   This research full paper presents research around the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program that serves two key purposes to: 1) provide a structured approach for engineering students to engage in real-world, service-based projects and 2) provide technical support and expertise that may be critical to local and global community organizations. Hence, EPICS strives to offer a platform that fosters the collaboration of engineering students and communities. EPICS helps develop undergraduate students’ professional skills extending beyond the theoretical knowledge acquired in classrooms. EPICS has been a fixture in engineering education for over 15 years, with a strong focus on curricular and pedagogical interventions to help students gain professional skills. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perspectives of over 650 students who participated in EPICS at a U.S. university during the academic years of 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. We used natural language processing (NLP) to thematically analyze students’ responses to an open-ended survey administered at the end of their semester participating in the EPICS program. Students’ responses reflect their perspectives on the design process, teamwork, real-world experiences, and the challenges they face during the design process related to other people and the program. In our findings, students’ least favorite parts of EPICS were lectures and design reviews, while their favorite parts of EPICS were teamwork and engaging with community partners. Understanding the themes emerging from the data can help us better implement community-based educational initiatives and find ways to better engage students in community service-learning projects. Our research provides implications for practice and research. 

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