Designing Archival Collections to Support Language Revitalization: Case Study of the Boro Language Resource

Abstract

Indigenous communities around the world are losing their languages at accelerating rates to the effects of the climate crisis and global capitalism. To preserve samples of these languages facing endangerment and extinction, samples of language use (e.g., audio-video recordings, photographs, textual transcriptions, translations, and analyses) are created and stored in language archives: repositories intended to provide long-term preservation of and access to language materials. In recent years, archives of all kinds are considering their origins and audiences. With the emergence of the community paradigm of archiving framework, the roles of archivists, communities, and institutions are under re-examination. Language archives too are reflecting this trend, as it becomes more common for speakers of Indigenous languages (also known as language communities) to document and archive their own languages and histories. As the landscape of language archiving expands, we now see increased emphasis on the re-use of archival material, particularly to support language revitalization—efforts to increase and maintain the use of the language. There are calls for language documentation (and, by extension, language archiving) to prioritize revitalization efforts. This dissertation is a case study of one language archive collection: the Boro Language Resource in the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive. The Boro Language Resource was created by Boro community members who are both experienced in linguistics and pedagogy and active in language revitalization efforts including research, educational, and cultural initiatives. This case study explores how the collection was designed, and how the material will be used in future language revitalization activities. Because this collection exemplifies the view of language documentation and archiving as revitalization-driven practices, the findings of this case study stand to inform future community archiving efforts aiming to support language revitalization.