Language Revitalization Lab

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon under the direction of Assistant Professor Gabriela Pérez Báez have established the Language Revitalization Lab (LRL) to coincide with the IYIL.

The LRL serves as a space of confluence of disciplines and interests that support language revitalization. It focuses primarily on fostering interdisciplinary research grounded on language revitalization contexts. In addition, serves as a production site for language documentation and language revitalization materials, and as a resource center for language revitalization practices.

The LRL acknowledges that language revitalization involves by necessity a significant component of outreach to language communities that results in a tangible contribution to a revitalization effort. In response, the LRL  endeavors to follow an outreach-based research model. The following are lines of research of special interest to the LRL

1. Language Revitalization as a field of research

• Comparative qualitative and quantitative analysis of language revitalization efforts aimed at identifying factors that facilitate, or hamper, language revitalization efforts.
• Archives-based research for revitalization of once-dormant languages, building upon the development of the Indigenous Languages Digital Archive .
• Models of assessment of vitality gains in language revitalization contexts –in contrast to models of language endangerment which focus on loss of vitality.
• Models of assessment of programmatic efforts in support of language revitalization.

2. The LRL seeks to infuse language revitalization in subdisciplines in Linguistics

• Language acquisition and second language acquisition (SLA) principles applied to language revitalization.
• Pedagogical principles in teaching of endangered languages, especially in the context where only SLA is viable
  Education technology for language revitalization.
• Language revitalization and its contributions to the advancement of research in phonetics, discourse pragmatics, dialectology, language contact, education technology etc.

3. Interdisciplinary research for revitalization that brings together practitioners and principles in environmental science, sociology, anthropology, medical sciences, arts, and business practices.