Speaker Creation in Indigenous Communities

Abstract

This dissertation is written for people that want to see Indigenous North American languages add new speakers to their speaking communities. It is my hope that community practitioner-educators as well as academic linguists will gain insight into speaker creation as I have facilitated it in my career as a language worker. This dissertation aims to link academia and practical implementation to collaboratively address the distinction between language reclamation and language revitalization, avenues of collaboration between indigenous communities and linguists, and the roles and responsibilities of people working to revitalize North American Indigenous languages with few remaining first language speakers. The discourse of this dissertation is intended to be accessible to both seasoned linguists, budding linguists, and non-linguists alike. The concepts are presented in a manner that respects the cultural nuances and lived experiences of Indigenous communities and prioritizes my personal experiences and perceptions of language work. Also, the privileging of community-centric examples is paramount in this work as it not only makes the content of this dissertation accessible but also relatable to people working in language revitalization of North American Indigenous languages with few remaining first language speakers. While an academic audience may appreciate theoretical frameworks and comprehensive literature reviews, the community audience will find value in practical examples, success stories, and step-by-step guides. The discourse of this dissertation is intended to resonate with both audiences, ensuring that the research remains academically rigorous while remaining directly applicable to those actively engaged in language revitalization. This dissertation explores the methodology of and notion of speaker creation in the context of Indigenous language revitalization by detailing the use of whole language immersion for accelerated language acquisition. Chapter One takes an in-depth look at the nature of the problem and the need for a meta-analysis and synthesis of the existing literature and my lived experience. Chapter Two is a literature review that summarizes the published work on successful speaker creation methods used in Indigenous communities and second language acquisition experiments. The literature review is written to give primacy to my lived experiences of creating speakers of the under-resourced, highly endangered Indigenous language. In Chapter Three, I discuss the methodologies often employed by Indigenous language workers who most times come from the backgrounds of linguistics, American Indian Studies, second language acquisition and teaching, and community-level revitalization. In Chapter Four, I introduce the notion of speaker creation in Indigenous North American communities. That is the process of bringing learners from zero heritage language speaking ability to being conversational enough to understand and express themselves to fluent first language speakers. Included in this work is a walk-through of a proposed template curriculum to be used by language workers wishing to gain accelerated speaking ability in any North American Indigenous language with few remaining first language speakers. In Chapter Five, I discuss the intersection of indigeneity, linguistics, and second language acquisition theory in the context of language acquisition and language education programming. I provide a discussion on the nuts and bolts of language assessment and policy implications for tribal programs that want to facilitate conversational speaking ability in their community. I follow up with concluding thoughts and recommendations for future research in the subject area of speaker creation in North American Indigenous language communities.