Language otherwise: Linguistic natures and the ontological challenge

Hauck, Jan David

doi:10.1111/jola.12384

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The sharp distinction between patois and Occitan (or, for that matter, Provençal) is indeed almost universal in the Occitan south of France among speakers of patois, pointing to the fact that the essential distinction for traditional speakers was not, as Blanchet believes, an ideological axis of differentiation (Gal & Irvine 2019) that was part of the 'Occitan' vs. 'Provençal' (or Gascon, or any other named variety) distinction, but an axis of ontological contrast (Hauck 2023) that contrasted patois to language. Whether this type of opposition of language practices is limited to the French use of the term patois or restricted to contexts long disappeared is doubtful too.…”

Section: Linguistic-ontological Work In Practice: Scraps Of a Bygone ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This work contributes to a growing conversation on language ontologies (Demuro & Gurney 2021;Hauck 2023), itself part of a wider discussion in anthropology asking how anthropologists can take seriously apparently paradoxical statements (Keck, Regehr, & Walentowitz 2015), such as 'the Bororos are Araras' (the Bororo are a people living in the Amazon, Araras are parrots) or, in our case, 'a patois is not a language'. What does the copula here entail, and how should we pay attention to it as linguistic anthropologists?…”

Section: Introduction : O N T H E F a I L U R E O F T H E L A N G U A...mentioning

confidence: 96%

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Why language revitalization fails: Revivalist vs. traditional ontologies of language in Provence

Costa

2024

Lang. Soc.

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This article asks why the Occitan language revitalization movement, which began in the 1850s, failed to convince the vast majority of Occitan speakers. Traditional explanations focus on social conflict, alienation, and diglossic ideologies. While essential elements, they may not provide a full account. Challenging the idea that patois is just a derogatory term pinned on what is in fact a language, this article proposes to take seriously the claim by traditional speakers that a patois is not a language. Drawing on fieldwork in Provence and historical data, I propose that the divergence is fundamentally ontological, revealing sharp differences that suggest that patois and language are indeed two separate things. The language movement's reduction of the patois/language issue to one of labels helps explain why traditional speakers and language advocates have been talking past each other for 150 years, raising practical questions for language movements worldwide. (Patois, occitan, ontologies of language, language revitalization, linguistic natures)*

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Section: Linguistic-ontological Work In Practice: Scraps Of a Bygone ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction : O N T H E F a I L U R E O F T H E L A N G U A...mentioning

confidence: 96%

Why language revitalization fails: Revivalist vs. traditional ontologies of language in Provence

Costa

2024

Lang. Soc.

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Fostering Linguistic Justice in Digital Spaces: Using Indigenous Methods in the Study of NLP

Gasparotto

2024

Emerging Media

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Data and data modeling practices in natural language processing (NLP) privilege languages with the greatest levels of representation online, leaving behind speakers of the overwhelming majority of the world's languages from enjoying the full benefits of digital inclusion. These dynamics have been explored in the context of historic colonial relationships, with linguists and language activists noting the colonizing discourses around the adoption of language-related technologies, and highlighting problematic research practices among linguists and computational linguists working in the area of digital corpus development for minoritized and Indigenous languages. Such power differentials raise questions about the source(s) and nature of language technology development bias in Global South contexts. To that end, this paper is divided into three parts. The first addresses the identification and roots of bias in NLP as it is currently understood, emphasizing the particular ways it is expressed in Global South contexts, and Latin America in particular. The second briefly discusses the theoretical frameworks of data colonialism and Indigenous data sovereignty as mechanisms to clarify how bias in NLP operates in these contexts. In the third section, Indigenous methods are proposed to investigate how these frameworks can help illuminate a research ethics around NLP for minoritized languages. Although there is an abundance of literature addressing ethics in NLP, no work to date has utilized an Indigenous methods framework to examine bias in the field, even as it relates specifically to Indigenous language data and technologies. This work argues that Indigenous methods can ultimately yield deeper insights into the concepts of bias and fairness in NLP, as well as the motivations and decisions employed in the development of language technologies, thereby serving as a more effective generator of equitable solutions while advancing theory development.

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Languages ontologies in higher education: the world-making practices of language teachers

Gurney,

Demuro

2024

Applied Linguistics Review

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In this paper, we engage the frame of language ontologies to explore what language is or might be, vis-à-vis empirical data from practicing language teachers and researchers. We conducted semi-structured interviews with fourteen participants to explore their accounts and self-reported practices of language(s)/languaging. We present five ontological accounts of language(s)/languaging as shared by the participants during the interviews: language as a tool for communication, language as thought, language as culture, language as system, and languaging as practice. We discuss the implications of these five ontological accounts for teaching, learning, and understanding language as a multiplicity.

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Language otherwise: Linguistic natures and the ontological challenge

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 3 publications

References 123 publications

Why language revitalization fails: Revivalist vs. traditional ontologies of language in Provence

Why language revitalization fails: Revivalist vs. traditional ontologies of language in Provence

Fostering Linguistic Justice in Digital Spaces: Using Indigenous Methods in the Study of NLP

Languages ontologies in higher education: the world-making practices of language teachers

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