Endangered Languages in Linguistics Research Field
The department of linguistic is one of the most important departments in any learning institution. During a study, students will have to gain knowledge and skills about how to report information, write the thesis, and do presentations and how to relate with one another within the institution. This department, therefore, is expected to be the most assertive as it plays a pivotal role in modeling students. Other departments heavily rely on linguistics. This department has faced a lot of issues in the recent past. Of most significance is the issue of endangered languages (Green 32). This essay discusses the endangered languages and their impact on other fields of study.
The departments of linguistics have woken up to the realization some languages are slowly dying and will soon come to an age of extinction. Language is vital as it’s the only form through which we communicate daily. Each society has had its native language. However, with colonialism and globalization, most indigenous languages have been neglected. This is because most people try to confirm to forms of languages with which they can use in any part of the world (Green 65).As parents neglect their native dialectal, their children lack a platform to master such languages resulting in a generation that does not know their language.
The field of linguistic mainly investigates how people acquire knowledge about a language, the relationship of this knowledge to other perceptive processes, geographical variations in language use and how this knowledge can be computerized. It is important to mention, however, that it is not necessarily true that all linguistic students know and understand so many languages. Linguistic is studied in relation to other disciplines. The linguistics helps other fields, especially during research and community works. To understand the native community one is going to approach, the skills of a linguistic are needed. But with the disappearance of some languages and cultures, it becomes difficult to understand communities.
As mentioned before, scientific research and thesis writing and testing heavily depend on linguistics. As researcher conduct their study, sometimes they rely on interviews with respondents. More often their respondents need to give the response in their native language as that’s the best way the society understands the data being collected. The disappearance of such a language greatly limits the spectra of data a scientist would collect (Henke et al. 9). This would result in incomplete data or rather not conclusive data. The disappearance of any language, therefore, would have dire consequences.
As more native languages disappear, more researchers get concerned due the impact of this to them. Most original documents were written in native languages. These documents were though treated as archives have provided resourceful primary data that have been used by various researchers to prove various theories and concepts (Henke et al. 37). It is important to note most current research studies stem from such primary findings that have been kept in the dusty files of archives. The disappearance of such native languages thus raises eyebrows on who would help the world comprehend the theories in such original research works.
The field of linguistic seems to be highly concerned with the issues of extinction of some languages despite the fact that this does not affect them directly. More study is done by linguistics on these native languages (Macaulay and Syrett10).These research works are of major importance to all fields of study as the finding would have positive contributions to other fields. Moreover, such new studies are significant regarding job creation in the field of linguistics. As the world becomes a global village and peoples a few dialects that are shared globally, there is the need to have persons, in this case, linguistic who would help understand the forgotten languages for people in various fields of studies and those with different interest.
The disappearance of such languages thus has opened a new line of research. Since most people had not thought this would come, there are a lot of constraints regarding personnel and monetary allocation (Macaulay and Syrett 22).With this elucidated interest, it is possible that much information pertaining this field would be found and possible result to great improvement in the field of linguistics. Venturing into this research field would be like stepping outside the boundaries. Something I consider as standing out instead fitting in. It would broaden the spectrum of research to all fields of study as no barrier would arise due to dialect (Henke et al. 43).
Though this a new niche in the fields of academia it needs to be bridged so quickly. Like was stated in the introductory statements, all fields of academia are dependent on linguistic. How and why they rely on this department has been extensively discussed in this paper. Extinction of indigenous dialect has been in the recent past the current issue in this field. While it saw part of the conformation of people in the world to globalization, it, however, has negative impacts to various fields of study. The departments of linguistic play an important role in keeping such challenges away by indulging in research in these languages so as to produce people who can easily understand the languages.
Works Cited
Green, Kath. Defining the field of literature in action research: a personal approach. Educational Action Research, 7.1(1999), 105-124, DOI: 10.1080/09650799900200077
Macaulay, Monica and Syrett, Kristen. Why major in linguistics. Advancing the study of languages. Linguistic Society of America.2012
Henke, Ryan et al. Utilization of Language Archives in Endangered Language Research, Revitalization and Documentation: Special Session of the Committee for Endangered Languages and Their Preservation. LSA 2015, Portland, Oregon