Documentary Linguistics: Alarm Bells and Whistles?

David Nathan, HRELP, SOAS
HRELP Seminar 23 November 2004

This talk will look at the nascent field concerned with endangered languages called "documentary linguistics", in particular examining its relationship to the use of technologies. Current projects offering key support to documentary linguistics have considerable emphasis on digital technologies and digital archiving, leading to the impression that not only are such technologies at the centre of documentary linguistics, but also that documentary linguistics is a methodology for creating language materials that are not merely "born digital" but "born archival".
What, if any, technologies are fundamental to documentary linguistics? Are they, as the name seems to imply, those of the mass media that can broadcast populist information about language endangerment; or should they be technologies that deliver usable language materials to communities? Are they digital techniques that ensure that information can be preserved intact for the long term, or should they be data encoding technologies that make data immediately searchable, retrievable, and manipulable? Perhaps there is a danger that, without a firmer foundation, documentary linguistics will be seen as a mere repository function of linguistics, just as archivists have been seen as the poor relations of historians.