Words, words, words | Nadya Bogdanova

https://www.ted.com/playlists/117/words_words_words

Last Wednesday I made a presentation on my thesis topic under the working title of “The Buryat Language: Heritage, Language Attitude, and Language Management”. This name metamorphosis - from “Preserving the Buryat Language: Strategy and Implementation” as formulated back in January for my research proposal to the current one - is a reflection of the thought process that has been going on in my mind this whole semester. 

However, it has been almost a week since the presentation class and I’m already making mental notes on what I need to do. And the first of these notes says just one thing - WORDS! 

Presenting my topic to my classmates and members of the faculty has made me realize one crucial thing that our instructor Zsuzsa Reed was talking about in one of our earliest sessions: everything should be clearly defined and precisely addressed. So now - while still trying to find time to read the essential literature which might be useful for my thesis - I’ve decided to focus on every word in my research question (at least the working version of it) and think of things that I should definitely include in my research (even sometimes they might seem obvious for me). 

Let’s look at it closer:

What language management measures can be taken to improve the existing positive shift in the language attitude towards the Buryat language among young people in order to strengthen the preservation of the Buryat people heritage?  

And divide it:

The Buryat people I’ve been already giving the essential information on this national minority living in Russia but now I realize that probably a little bit broader context - more facts, figures, information on history, culture, politics - is needed. Moreover to make my work more precise I need to acknowledge the fact that I’m going to concentrate only on the language situation in the Republic of Buryatia (maybe even acknowledge it in the thesis topic?). Also, don’t forget the map! (hi, Alice!)

The Buryat language Again - a broader context. For me it is quite obvious but for people who’ll be reading the thesis it is not: the Buryat language belongs to the Altaic / Mongolian language family, its closest relative language is Mongolian, its literary standard is written in a Cyrillic alphabet based on the Russian alphabet with addition of three extra letters. Nowadays it is the second official language in the Republic of Buryatia (after Russian) but the real state of things doesn't reflect the high status. All of this should be carefully described and presented in my thesis.

The Buryat people heritage What is the relationship between language and cultural heritage? Are they interconnected? I need to focus on the role of language in preserving cultural heritage and mention the fact that culture is expressed through language through many forms of narratives, language reflects the way we think and the way we feel, and that is why the loss of endangered languages can only mean the loss of such knowledge, cultural richness and consequently cultural diversity.

The language attitude Here I need to elaborate on the term itself: language attitudes are evaluative reactions to different language varieties. Normally they reflect two cognitive processes: social categorization and stereotyping. First, listeners use different cues (such as accent or the use of particular words) to infer speakers’ social group membership: social class, level of education, level of income, family history. Second, based on that categorization, they attribute to speakers stereotypic traits associated with those inferred group membership. However, if I still follow Julia Sallabank’s five factors of language endangerment (1. Economic 2. Cultural dominance by the majority community 3. Political 4. Historical. 5. Attitudinal)*, I need to - at least briefly - dwell on them as well. And after receiving feedback from Gulnoza, I became assured that it is a must.

Shift in the language attitude To talk about this I need to make clear what the language attitude used to be and how the shift happened. Moreover, I need to find ways of demonstrating somehow that this shift took place. How can I state that there is the shift? Present the existing scholarship on the matter, analyse the existing situation and illustrate - on one particular area - the shift in the language attitude.

Young people This is probably the most vague term which really needs elaboration. Gulnoza suggested to narrow down the criteria! Shall do.

Language management measures Here I need to specify which language management measures and who would be the addressee. In understanding “language management” I follow Bernard Spolsky’s definition who says that it is “efforts by some members of a speech community who have or believe they have authority over other members to modify their language practice, such as by forcing or encouraging them to use a different variety or even a different variant”**. But here I need to specify which part of a speech community will be the agents of the proposed language management measures and how they are related to the aforementioned vague young people.

Thought it was the representation of me?

No way. I'm excited! Hope you are too.

We can do it.

*Julia Sallabank, ‘Diversity and language policy for endangered languages’, in The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy, ed. Bernard Spolsky. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
**Spolsky, B. Language Management. Cambridge University Press, 2009.