Vasiliki Vita | SOAS University of London (original) (raw)

Drafts by Vasiliki Vita

This essay was submitted as the final project for the module "The Discourse of Social Media" conv... more This essay was submitted as the final project for the module "The Discourse of Social Media" convened by Mariza Georgalou at the University of Athens, Greece.

Papers by Vasiliki Vita

SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 22, 2024

As more and more linguists are shifting towards recognising and documenting linguistic ecosystems... more As more and more linguists are shifting towards recognising and documenting linguistic ecosystems, multilingual, and/or translanguaging practices (Di Carlo, Ojong Diba, & Good 2021), the question remains as to how these practices are navigated and represented at the policy level. The Young Historians of Sonsorol (YH) are a youth group focusing on the preservation of the Sonsorolese language and culture in the Republic of Palau. Sonsorolese is a language in the Republic of Palau, spoken in the Outer Islands of the Republic, Sonsorol, Fanna, Pulo Anna, and Merir, and only has official status within the State of Sonsorol. This paper aims to answer the following questions: How did speakers of the Sonsorolese assert their linguistic human rights at the policy level during the youth-led language documentation and maintenance initiative (Vita et al. 2023)? What was the role of the initiative? I answer these questions by discussing a) volunteer and general audience's reactions to the activities and Sonsorolese languages, b) the impact of youth initiatives on the State Legislature within the timeframe of October 2022 to January 2023 and of the 11th Regular Session of the Sonsorol State Legislature in January 2023; and c) its potential implications concerning language variation within the State of Sonsorol. The process involves YH engaging in metadocumentation (Austin 2013), and in particular sociolinguistic documentation (Childs, Good & Mitchell 2014), as well as with policymakers and, finally, YH sharing results in various ways and environments following local norms and practices.

Linguistics Vanguard, 2022

Linguists are seldom, if ever, engaged in work aimed at communicating risk to the general public.... more Linguists are seldom, if ever, engaged in work aimed at communicating risk to the general public. The COVID-19 global pandemic and its associated infodemic may change this state of affairs, at least for documentary linguists. Documenting languages may bring researchers in direct contact with communities speaking minority or marginalized languages and gain key insights into their communicative ecologies. By being both immersed in local networks and more or less knowledgeable about the community's communicative habits, documentary linguists appear to be placed in a unique position to contribute to communicating risk in ways that are better tailored to the community and, therefore, potentially quite effective locally. Furthermore, adding work in risk communication to their agenda may also stimulate documentary linguists to find new models for "giving back" to the communities they work with. In order to provide a concrete example of how all this may play out in concrete terms, we illustrate the virALLanguages project.

The Philological Society Blog, 2023

SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, vol 20, 2021

This paper aims at providing a detailed account of a standardisation project currently underway f... more This paper aims at providing a detailed account of a standardisation project currently underway for Ramari Dongosaro, or Sonsorolese (ISO 639-3: sov), an endangered language spoken by less than 400 speakers (Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2021) in the Republic of Palau. The purpose of this paper is to function as a record of the project, providing a preliminary phonological analysis, along with recommendations for an alphabet for Sonsorolese and potential applications of it. Finally, with this paper, we aim to gain input and feedback from Micronesian languages specialists and linguists specialising in standardisation.

Language on the Move, 2020

The definition of new media characterises it as a combination of traditional means, such as telev... more The definition of new media characterises it as a combination of traditional means, such as television, newspaper, radio, and ICT, such as smartphones, computers and the Internet in all its forms (social networks, search engines etc.). This new media has allowed for a wealth of information to be transmitted fast and cheap.
However, its convergence and distribution has not been equal. There are still countries and communities around the world who do not have access to it with great consequences. In particular, health information, education and promotion has been limited in some contexts, even though it is sometimes the main factor for dealing with the spread of contagious diseases.
For example, in Cameroon, the transmission of knowledge, history and experience happens through story-telling (World Affairs Council of Houston) and with limited infrastructure (Mbaku, 2016: 150). Although the Internet could become a solution for the inequality in information sharing, there are certain limitations in developing contexts, such as connectivity, IT literacy, cultural appropriateness and accessibility (Chhanabnai and Holt 2010).
This blog post focuses on how the virALLanguages project has combated these limitations making the Internet a bridge for Cameroonians to achieve access to accurate and culturally appropriate information regarding Covid-19.
In particular, it deals with the development of IT literacy via the provision of instructions on how to properly record oneself using the resources available, with issues of connectivity by providing low quality downloads at times of low Internet connection and accessibility by making it possible to share the recordings on WhatsApp, a popular and accessible option for Cameroonians. Finally, it deals with issues of cultural appropriateness by encouraging the message to be in the local language, by local leaders and using local means, such as the town-cryer, for its deliverance.

https://www.languageonthemove.com/bridging-new-and-traditional-media-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/

Thesis Chapters by Vasiliki Vita

MA Dissertation, 2020

This dissertation uses raw data of Ramari Hatohobei or Tobian (ISO 639-3 tox), an endangered Micr... more This dissertation uses raw data of Ramari Hatohobei or Tobian (ISO 639-3 tox), an endangered Micronesian language, archived at the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) for the description of its prosodic patterns. The primary aim is to contribute to the description of Tobian and fill the gap in Regh’s (1993) paper on Proto-Micronesian prosody. A secondary aim is to identify the extent to which archived data could be useful for linguistic description and in particular for the analysis of prosody. In the first part, a discussion on the role of language archives is presented with some background information on Tobian and Micronesian prosody. The second part describes the methodology used for the description of Tobian prosodic patterns, while in the third part, the analysis and results of the prosodic patterns in Tobian are presented, followed by a discussion on the usefulness and quality of the particular collection. In the concluding remarks, some ideas for future research are introduced.

Conference Presentations by Vasiliki Vita

BAAL, Language Policy Forum, 2023

As more and more linguists are shifting towards recognizing and documenting linguistic ecosystems... more As more and more linguists are shifting towards recognizing and documenting linguistic ecosystems, multilingual and/or translanguaging practices (Di Carlo, Ojong Diba & Good 2021), the question remains as to how these practices are navigated and represented at the policy level. How can multilingual communities assert their linguistic human rights at the policy level? What is the role of language documentation and maintenance initiatives in doing so?

This presentation focuses on presenting and evaluating the impact of a youth initiative documenting and preserving traditional culture and language in the Republic of Palau, Micronesia, and the impact of its activities at the policy level. The Young Historians of Sonsorol are a youth group focusing on the preservation of Sonsorolese language and culture in the Republic of Palau. Sonsorolese is a minoritized language in the Republic of Palau, spoken in the Outer islands of the Republic, only having official status within the State of Sonsorol, which includes Outer islands; Dongosaro, Fanna, Puro, and Melieli.

The presentation discusses the impact of a language documentation project funded by a Small Grant from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme on participants' attitudes, ideologies and expectations toward Sonsorolese, and their influence at the level of State Legislature and national institutions, such as the Palau Language Commission and the Bureau of Historical and Cultural Preservation.

It concludes that language initiatives, when considering the language ecology (Mühlhäusler 2000), not only in terms of how languages interact with each other at the social level, but also how speakers and individuals interact with the natural environment, may have implications for social equality and development.

The 8th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation, 2023

Ramari Dongosaro, or Sonsorolese (ISO 639-3 son) is a nuclear Micronesian language spoken in the ... more Ramari Dongosaro, or Sonsorolese (ISO 639-3 son) is a nuclear Micronesian language spoken in the South-West islands of the Republic of Palau. Sonsorolese is the official language of the State of Sonsorol but still lacks in status and corpus (Matsumoto 2020). When discussing literacy efforts in Micronesia, Rehg (2004) mentions that these efforts were in general unsuccessful because speakers were not sure what to do with their language(s). In this talk, we present and discuss a collaborative project between a linguist and a local youth NGO, the Young Historians of Sonsorol. The aim of the talk is to present efforts - to maintain the language within the community - to raise awareness and status within the wider Palauan society - to build capacity in language documentation for future local projects In particular, we present our current efforts for multimodal documentation. We discuss the role of Participatory Action Research (Fals-Borda 1991; Kemmis & McTaggart 2005; Reason & Bradbury 2006), informed by Pasifika values and methodologies (Henry & Pene 2001; Bishop 1998; Toumu’a, Sanga & Fua 2018) in documenting and planning the status of the language. We compare past initiatives and discuss ethical issues in language documentation, language planning, and training and capacity building in language reclamation.