Jidanabat gudwei en lenimbat kaltja en langgus garrim ola Hodgson Downs mob : a community-focused approach to doing language work with an Australian Aboriginal endangered language community (2004, Honours thesis) (original) (raw)
This dissertation offers an exposition of a community-focused approach towards fieldwork, or 'language work', with an Aboriginal community. Specifically, it discusses a community-based language project I undertook with members of Hodgson Downs community, Northern Territory, which involved the recording and translation of a traditional story from their traditional language of Alawa into English and Kriol and adapting it into a resource. While this project focused primarily on the needs of the language community, it also succeeded in addressing needs of the academic community by revealing data that contributes to descriptive linguistics. The rational behind doing language work that focuses on community needs arises from three interrelated areas: - the emergence and growing influence of Indigenous perspectives on research, - the vocational reality for linguists working endangered language communities, - academic studies that are controlled by or collaborate with Aboriginal people - the increasing amount of such studies and the quality of the data they provide. The resulting project involved identifying community needs and negotiation a project based around these needs. As a researcher undertaking a community-focused project, I was required to get to know the community, acculturate and collaborate with community members throughout the entire process. This helped to ensure the project was appropriate to the community and succeeded in benefitting the community. The project also makes valuable contributions to descriptive linguistics. The story we recorded and translated contains a number of Alawa lexical items that had not been previously recorded by researchers. Also, additional semantic, encyclopaedic, syntactic and phonological information was revealed that built upon existing published information about Alawa. This dissertation demonstrates that community-focused approaches to linguistic research offer potential benefits for academic and Aboriginal communities. The project I undertook with community members at Hodgson Downs succeeded in being beneficial for the local community, the academic community and myself.
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