Ecology of a Langauage Project Directions Paper
Your assignment is to research and report on the ecology of a language. Important dates for this assignment are:
Choice of language/dialect submitted by September 19th.
Rough draft of paper is due by October 24th.
Finished paper due by November 21st.
This paper must be at least 4 pages in length.
Miss any of these deadlines and you will have one week grace period to make it up, after which you will receive a zero for the project. If you turn it on by email instead of on Canvas, you will receive a zero. Only assignments turned in on Canvas will count.
Ecology of a Language
For the purposes of this paper, “Ecology of a Language” refers to the cultural, social, and political setting of the language and its users, as well as geographical locations of its speakers. This includes issues of who speaks it, ethnicity and social status of its users, under what circumstances do they speak it, what other languages or dialects do they speak, and so on. Topics presented below will make this clearer. You must connect the language to this larger context, or you will receive no points. It is fine to write about the structure of the language, the phonology, etc., but if you don’t write anything about the culture contexts of the language, you will not receive any points.
Language/Dialect Choice
You can not choose your first or native language, or a language that is spoken in your home. You will choose to write on a particular language or specific dialect of a language. Your choice must not be one of the more wide-spread “languages” such as Spanish, French, Russian, Latin, Greek, Chinese, etc. Instead, you must narrow your focus to a specific dialect or variety of one of these or some other language; or you may choose a lesser-known European or non-European language. Dialects of wide-spread languages may be appropriate: For example, rather than “Spanish,” you might choose Cuban Spanish, or Andean Spanish. Instead of “French,” you might look at Quebec French, or West African French. You are also welcome to choose a dialect of English. This might be a regional dialect, such as New England, Southwestern, or Appalachian; or it might be a social dialect, such as Cajun, or Boston Brahmin.
You may, if you wish, report on a creole language. Some examples include: Sea Island Creole (“Gullah”); the West Indian Creole languages (Jamaican, Haitian, Belizean, Trinidadian, Papiamentu, etc.); South American creoles (Sranan Tongo, Saramakan, Ndjuka, etc.); Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea); Krio (Sierra Leon); Kamtak (Cameroon); etc. It should be noted that African American (Ebonics), may be analyzed as either a dialect of American English, or as a creole language; if you choose this language variety, you must explain how you classify it, and why.
No dead languages will be accepted.
You must submit your language choice on Canvas, by September 5th. It must meet the criteria described above. Failure to do so will result in forfeiting all twenty points for the paper, and twenty points for the third quiz, which will be based on this assignment. That is a total of 40 points, 20% of the total points for this semester. If you choose a language that doesn’t meet the criteria above, you will have one chance and one week to make a new, acceptable selection. If you fail to do that, again, you will lose these points.
Topics you will cover
Here are the topics you will cover, presented as basic questions (Adapted from The Linguistic Reporter, Winter 1971, page 25). Some of these may be a simple “The language, with approximately xxx,xxx number of speakers, is not endangered.” But you must still include the topic in your paper. You must address every topic here in order to get your 20 points. If you can’t, you’d better explain why you can’t.
What is the name of the language variety (what do its speakers call it; what do non-speakers call it; what do linguists call it)?
Who are its users, and how are they grouped by nation, geographical location, class, religion, or any other relevant grouping?
What larger “language” does it belong to? What are the main closely related dialects?
What other dialects are employed by its users?
Is this dialect written? If so, how and in what contexts?
- Is its use restricted or limited in certain ways, for example religion or ritual, written literature, legal proceedings, folk tales, and so on?
- What issues of power and authority are relevant to this dialect?
- Is the dialect endangered? If so, what factors might be involved? If not, what might be contributing to its vitality?
- Organization
- Organize your paper into sections based on the topics above. I want each section labeled with a heading. The introduction should clearly state your research. WARNING: If I don’t know what you are writing about by the time I finish the first paragraph, I will not read the rest of your paper, and you will receive no credit.
- The body of your paper will address the topics above. Trust me, this will give you plenty to write about.
- You can also comment briefly on the similarities and differences of the language you are examining and your first language. In the main body of the paper, describe your findings, illustrating with examples, where appropriate. You may also want to devote a more in-depth comparison of the language you looked at and Standard English. In the conclusion, summarize your main points. You may also want to point out areas where you feel that further research is needed to further understand the use of the language/dialect you studied.
- Take these topics seriously! If your paper isn’t organized around them, it will not receive any points. If you find other questions/topics that are relevant to the language, feel free to add them.
To summarize this section so that there are no questions, organize your paper in this way:
The first paragraph must be a brief introduction. I need to know the name of the language or dialect within three sentences, or I stop reading. No hyperbole (“Gaelic is the most beautiful language in the world” or “Ever since Man climbed out of the primordial soup, language has separated us from the other animals.”). Trying to make it sound “fancy” with such writing will get you a zero. Such nonsense has no place in an academic paper, this isn’t a Disney “educational” documentary.
References
All references must be from valid, scholarly sources, and properly cited. All listed references must be cited in the text. Internet sources should be scholarly work made available on the Internet, or from print sources such as journal articles accessed through the Internet.
Basic Criteria for All References
If you violate one or more of the following criteria, you will forfeit all points:
You must cite at least 4 scholarly references. You will need to find sources for both language and culture, you may find that some sources only cover one or the other, so you may need to have different sources for different topics.
All references cited in the text must be on your reference page. All references on your reference page must be cited in the text.
All quotations must be in quotation marks and properly cited.
All references must have an author’s name. If there is no author’s name, it probably isn’t a scholarly source; don’t cite it! Travel and tourist guides, brochures, commercial websites, and other non-scholarly sources will not be accepted. Even Websites from universities and scholarly institutions are not to be accepted if they do not have an author’s name. Do not even think of citing Wikipedia. You may use Wikipedia to familiarize yourself with the basics and to find sources, but you must use real references.
The reference page must list references in alphabetical order as demonstrated on the link below. All references must be in the same font as the rest of the paper. Different fonts on the reference page is a sign that they were cut and pasted into your paper. References are not to be presented as end notes or footnotes.
All references must adhere to the guidelines at this link for Chicago Style. This link gives you examples for every possible citation situation, from citation page to in-text citations. The Writing Intensive mandate from the university requires that you write in the style that is the standard in the field. For anthropology, it is a particular form of Chicago Style. The Chicago Style Book provides guidelines for several ways to cite and list sources, but only the form at this link is the one accepted by Anthropology journals in the United States. This page is very clear, you literally just look for the heading describing the type of publication you are citing, and then follow the same form. Select this link to for guidelines to Chicago Style
- Transcription system
- If your paper provides written examples of the language, the transcription system you use depends upon what you’ve decided to discuss in your paper. If you are talking about phonology, such as differences in pronunciations for different dialects, you may want to use IPA transcription. If you are talking about syntax (grammar, word order), you can probably simply use the writing system of the language if it uses the Latin alphabet (but make sure you mention if there are any important discrepancies between writing and pronunciation); or if it uses a non-Latin alphabet you may choose to transcribe it using IPA or simple Latin letters. If you are commenting on the orthography (writing system), and have access to the appropriate fonts, you may use the writing system of the language. As an example, if your language of choice were Russian (not allowed for this project, you would have to use a dialect of Russian; or perhaps a study of ??? words as used by a “gopnik” sub-culture), the sentence “I love you” would be written in Cyrillic as ? ???? ?????. Since most Americans cannot read Cyrillic script you should not use it in your paper unless orthography is an important issue in your paper. You may want to transcribe the sentence using IPA (especially if discussing phonology/phonetics), but it will also be acceptable to transliterate it into Latin characters:
- ? ???? ?????. [Russian]
- ja tjIbjja ljublju [IPA]
- ya tyebya lyublyu [Latin Characters]
- The key point here is to always make sure you give enough information. If you’re talking about morphology and different allomorphs are used in different phonological environments, you need to make sure this is clear in your transcription – and it may not be clear in the actual writing system of the language. When in doubt, use IPA.
Examples
When discussing data from a language other than English, give a translation of the sentence. In addition, provide glosses for the individual words in the sentence – the gloss can differ substantially from the translation. For example:
Ya tyebya lyublyu
I (nominative) you (accusative) love (1sg)
“I love you”
“I adore you”
Presentation
You may be an intelligent and perceptive person, but in the context of your paper, I don’t care what your “unschooled” opinions might be. Your conclusions must be scholarly opinions: they must follow from the facts you present, placed in the context of theory or other scholarly work on language and culture.
Be clear and to the point. Don’t try to sound “fancy.” Do not write a long and convoluted or “cute” or “clever” introduction. If I don’t know what language and/or dialect is the subject of your paper by the first three sentences, I will hand it back unread.
You are expected to write in a scholarly manner. Do not start a sentence with the word, “Well, . . ”. Phrases such as “in nowadays culture”, “since the dawn of time,” “throughout history,” etc. are both vague and generally wrong.
Don’t use a word if you don’t know what it means. Ignore your hardcopy thesaurus or your thesaurus software. If those words really all meant exactly the same thing, we wouldn’t have all those words.
Do not refer to authors by their first names. They are not your friends; you have no personal relationship with them. It will cost you points. Refer to authors by their last names and do not use titles such as “Dr.” or “Prof.”
Do not use the word “lifestyle” when you mean “way of life.” Individuals have a “lifestyle,” societies have a “way of life.”
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