About the Senses of Vitality: Reviewing the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (UNESCO) Through Local Indigenous Experiences
We seek to analyse and problematize the meanings of vitality present in the UNESCO Atlas of endangered languages (1996). This discussion matters insofar as UNESCO's typological and classificatory proposal has been widely used within the scope of policies engaged with the revitalization of indig...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Associação Brasileira de Linguística (ABRALIN) |
| Repositorio: | Cadernos de Linguística |
| Idioma: | inglés portugués |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs3.cadernos.abralin.org:article/690 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/cadernos/article/view/690 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Vitalidade Revitalização Perigo Atlas Línguas Indígenas Vitality Revitalization Endangerement Indigenous Languages |
| Sumario: | We seek to analyse and problematize the meanings of vitality present in the UNESCO Atlas of endangered languages (1996). This discussion matters insofar as UNESCO's typological and classificatory proposal has been widely used within the scope of policies engaged with the revitalization of indigenous languages, both in Brazil and abroad. The Atlas was created aiming at raising awareness concerning endangered languages and the safeguarding of language diversity, as well as at monitoring the status of endangered languages globally. We emphasize the importance of a critical and contextualized framework that problematizes the meanings of vitality concerning the idea of “endangered languages”. We pay particular attention to the categorizations involving the “degrees of endangerment” in relation to the nine evaluative factors indicated by the Atlas. Our problematization considers, according to Lupke (2017) that the meaning of vitality must consider four pillars: 1) investigation of communicative practices in a significant geographic context or linguistic ecosystem; 2) investigation of how these communicative practices are named and reified, and what ideologies and perspectives result from the practice of naming them; 3) study of the indexical functions of language use and languages as ideological representations; 4) analysis of the different power dynamics, perspectives and ideologies of speakers and people outside these contexts. We present some meanings of vitality based on linguistic experiences of the Macuxi people (Northern Brazil) and Mbyá Guarani (Southern Brazil), in order to verify how these pillars help to creatively and productively expand the meanings of vitality and of revitalization beyond the classification system indicated by the Atlas. Finally, we include a discussion of the importance of an indigenous research agenda engaged with a decolonial perspective. |
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