People should be using the study of linguistics to better people’s understanding about their languages as well as the communities around them, Carleton professor Marie-Odile Junker said April 4.
“Being a linguist today is a bit like being a biologist and working on the disappearance of a species,” Junker said during the annual Davidson Dunton Research Lecture about Canadian aboriginal languages. “You are kind of sad that the object of your study is disappearing.”
Junker spoke about her work in the study of the languages of the Eastern Cree in Quebec and how the study of linguistics could be used to better people’s understandings about their languages as well as the community around them.
In her lecture titled, “Giving Voice to Aboriginal Languages: Putting Information Technology to Work for People,” she began by discussing how information technology can sustain the linguistic diversity of a people that had their culture and language depleted as a result of residential schools, and how this can lead to a better community.
Junker spoke specifically about the website Eastcree.org, which was created in 2000 to provide East Cree schools with programs and charts that would teach students how to read in their native language and alphabet as well as writing their alphabet while using keyboards on computers.
“There is a lot of symbolism that is involved in providing these students with the opportunity to write in their [alphabet],” Junker said.
It’s the creation of these types of databases for oral traditions that offer accessible, collaborative and inexpensive methods to preserve oral traditions, she said.
In the case of the Cree in Quebec, Junker said “many of the local radio stations became involved in learning to record these oral stories and travelled to CKCU FM here at Carleton to learn digital sound editing and watched as we recorded many of these oral stories.”
The importance of cataloguing and organizing resources for Cree speakers wasn’t lost on the audience, many of whom were students and teachers of linguistics and have online language programs for themselves.
“I really enjoyed the lecture,” said James Newton, technical director for the online language program, Lexogram. “It raised a lot of important issues and I hope that it will remind people that the more knowledgeable you are in languages, the less tension you will feel when you are in other countries or cultures.”
