This award supports a special colloquium at the 2nd Conference for Language Documentation and Conservation to be held in Hawaii in 2011. The proposal focuses on the use of video as a medium for documentation and explores the various ways that this is envisioned as a research tool. Research practices in documentation can be vastly improved if a quality corpus of video recordings can be established. Training in this area is critical and will be provided as part of the pre-conference training session. Video can also serve as the medium in which to reintroduce archival records, thus assisting in language revitalization efforts. Furthermore, the use of endangered languages in popular movies has also had an impact both on the local community, and on the broader understanding of the nature and diversity of Indigenous languages.
This project brings practitioners of all three of these styles of film-making together to encourage students to consider novel techniques in their own practice. The development of video records of linguistic performance will provide a better base for future analysis as more of the context of the performance is available in film than has been the case for traditional linguistic fieldnotes. Training students in the use of these techniques will ensure they develop appropriate practices and keep abreast of suitable research methodology.
This grant funded part of the 2nd International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (2nd ICLDC). The conference has established a strong reputation for its range and number of presentations and for the involvement of many Indigenous people in its proceedings. The 2nd International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC) (http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ICLDC/2011/) was held in Honolulu from February 9-13 2011. The theme of the 2nd ICLDC was "Strategies for Moving Forward," with the aim to build on the strong momentum created at the 1st ICLDC (http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ICLDC/2009/) and to discuss research and revitalization approaches yielding rich, accessible records which can benefit both the field of language documentation and speech communities. With the grant from the Documenting Endangered Languages program of NSF/NEH, we were able to provide scholarships to seven students, and to arrange optional pre-conference workshops (9-10 February) to provide technical training for language documentation. There were training workshops on software such as ELAN, FLEX, Toolbox, LEXUS, and VICOS as well as topical workshops on psycholinguistic techniques for the assessment of language strength, video/film in language documentation, archiving challenges and metadata, and language acquisition for revitalization specialists. More information about the workshops can be found here: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/icldc/2011/workshops.html. One of the following three colloquia was offered daily, which were enthusiastically attended by conference participants: Dictionaries and Endangered Languages: Technology, Revitalization, and Collaboration (Organizer: Sarah Ogilvie) The Use of Film in Language Documentation (Organizers: Rozenn Milin and Melissa Bisagni; sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation) Grammaticography (Organizer: Sebastian Nordhoff; sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig) In addition to some 100+ presentations, three plenaries, and three invited colloquia at the main conference (11-13 February), the 2nd ICLDC offered a variety of additional pre- and post-conference events. The full schedule, with abstracts, can be seen here: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ICLDC/2011/program.html.
