CoLang
| Abbreviation | CoLang |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2008 |
| Founder | Carol Genetti |
| CoLang Advisory Circle | |
|
Formerly called
|
InField: Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation |
The Institute on Collaborative Language Research or CoLang is a biannual training institute in field linguistics and language documentation for linguists, fieldworkers, students, members of indigenous language communities and other individuals interested in community-based language work. CoLang has been described as part of a new collaborative model in community-based methodologies of language revitalization and documentation, where speakers of indigenous languages are valued as equal partners with linguists rather than as research subjects.
The institute happens in even-numbered summers (opposite the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute) at various American universities, but it has drawn participants and instructors from around the world, including Australia, Canada, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The first part of the institute consists of two weeks of workshops on topics like community archiving, linguistics, audio and video recording, language teaching, and activism. The workshops are followed by a three or four week practicum where participants work intensively with speakers of a language to document it.
While each individual institute is organized by one or two local director(s), CoLang as a whole is governed by its Advisory Circle, which includes linguistics professors, community linguists, students, and representatives from partner organizations. The co-convenors of the Advisory Circle as of October 2015 are Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins and Susan Gehr. Each institute has been funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Documenting Endangered Languages program.
The first InField in 2008 resulted in ongoing collaboration between Kennedy Bosire and Carlos Nash for the completion of the Ekegusii encyclopedia and a dissertation on tone in Ekegusii, while the fifth CoLang in 2016 resulted in the development of a thirty-year revitalization plan for Kristang in Singapore. InField/CoLang has also resulted in ongoing community-based linguistics work in Kwak'wala and Kari’nja, among others.
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