SEMINAR: Linguistics Seminar on language revitalization:

Whilst necessary for the revitalization of language, the teaching of endangered Australia Aboriginal languages to children has been criticized for focusing too much or exclusively on teaching single words in wordlists (Meakins, 2010). This focus needs to be reconciled with speakers aspirational, but largely unattained, goals for fluency, and thus their larger goals for language revitalization (Hobson, 2010).

In my research I explore, through interviews, the range of perspectives of part-speakers of Aboriginal languages across four Western Australian communities (Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Geraldton, and Kununnura), regarding language learning and teaching language to children. These part-speakers, who are learning their Indigenous languages as adult second language learners, similarly talked primarily about teaching their own children single words.

In this presentation I want to ask not why speakers teach ‘only words’ – which might easily be explained as a constraint of adult learners’ own proficiency and the linguistic resources available to them – but to ask what speakers think about teaching single words, including the cultural value of symbolic vocabulary, and how speakers relate single words to the aspirational goal of conversational fluency. I also draw on work by Meakins (2010), who discusses the positive value of teaching single words as part of maintaining language through the use of Kriol; and Amery (2009), who advocates for language teaching following a Formulaic Approach.