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"extinct" -> "sleeping"
I'll give this a second try (see #321), bear with me please. "Sleeping" is more and more becoming the conventional term for languages with no native speakers.
Felicity Meakins just made me aware that this is also the term used by Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages.. "extinct" seem to be less and less used (when it is, it seems to be primarily europeans) and more importantly, it is upsetting to many people.
ElCat is now using "dormant" instead of "extinct", Ethnologue (EGDIS) is using "dormant" and "extinct" with different meanings and UNESCO appears to still be using "extinct" (which is a bit odd as we head into the decade of indigenous languages). I suspect that ElCat is ahead of the change and that EGDIS and UNESCO may also soon adopt terminologi that avoids "extinct". Personally I think that Glottolog should get with the times and do the very simple thing to switch "extinct" for "sleeping".
All terms for endangerment levels need unpacking anyway, so why not make the update :)?
It appears ElCat is still using "extinct" after all, it's just not part of the map view on the website. Here's what they've chosen to say:
I am in full agreement with this.
Labels aren’t just labels but carry the weight of history and ideological perspectives with them!
We need to be using labels which are accepted by the speech communities who are increasingly using the term 'sleeping'. This terms has recently also moved out of activist circles into academic circles and ELCat should reflect this shift. As an academic communities we need to be showing respect to endangered language communities and their wishes.
I understand this discussion so far as unanimous request to change the term "extinct" - as far as it is used in association with languages in Glottolog - to "sleeping", correct? The Glottolog data is already modeled in such a way that an endangerment status has an identifier and a name (or label). So the "natural" way to address this issue would be by changing the label and associating languages with status (in the languoid info files, e.g. stan1295) via the identifier.
Now, currently, the identifier for the problematic status is "extinct", see the string in [...] here https://github.com/glottolog/glottolog/blob/5d1c1335072fcdd4bd680294a0ee6963d42ad796/config/aes_status.ini#L46-L52
Clearly, having a mnemonic identifier has advantages for data curation. But I guess using "extinct" as identifier would be problematic, too - right?
Clearly, the label "extinct" is problematic for the reasons mentioned by Hedvig, and also because of its biological associations: Languages are cultural packages, and if there are good records of them, they can be revitalized or revived. But I don't think we can, in general, "use labels which are accepted by the speech communities", because different speech communities (or ethnic communities) may use different labels. The label "sleeping" may be widespread in North America and Australia, but I don't think it's used in Africa or Asia. Quite generally, I think we should try to avoid concepts that come primarily from Europe-derived societies ("indigenous" is another term that is not useful in Africa and Asia).
We probably need to recognize that sociolinguistic comparative concepts cannot (in general) be identical to the concepts used by different cultures. In the study of grammar and lexicon, this is now fairly widely recognized. For Glottolog, we need sociolinguistic comparative concepts (such as "language" and "dialect") that can be applied uniformly everywhere. These concepts need not be "accepted by the speech communities". For example, many speakers of varieties of Chinese regard their varieties as "dialects", but Glottolog classifies them as languages. Conversely, many speakers of Serbo-Croatian think that there is no such language (because they identify only with the Croatian language or the Serbian language), but we regard "Croatian" and "Serbian" as varieties of the Serbo-Croatian language. This is not out of a lack of respect for Chinese or Croatian/Serbian speakers, but because of our comparative perspective which requires conceptual uniformity.
Another option @xrotwang is to go down the path of ElCat and EGDIS and use "sleeping/dormant" for most languages and use "extinct" for for example ancient languages. I think the preferred alternative is to just do a replacement, as AES currently doesn't include the ability to make this nuanced distinction I think, but just in case you needed alternatives that is one that is also common it seems.
@haspelmath I think you'll find that "sleeping" is becoming more and more the term also among European linguists working on endangered languages (though I'm guessing typologists and theoretical linguists are probably a bit late to this term). I think we should avoid terms that are upsetting, and that are out of the times with the relevant field. I agree that Glottolog should uphold consistent definitions, and I believe that it is more consistent to use the term" sleeping" since these languages have the ability to be revitalised, and in some cases have.
I don't know what terminology is most common among African or Asian linguists, but I know that the term "sleeping" is gaining momentum among researchers who work on engendered languages in Africa and in Asia. Furthermore, I don't think keeping "extinct" fits with the spirit of "not using terms derived from European societies".
I would really appreciate if there was a way of surveying the preferences of linguists in Africa and Asia. In fact, if you don't mind I think I'll get in touch with some friends I have in those areas to see what they have to say. I'll report back if I can.
I wasn't arguing for keeping "extinct", and I have no objections to "sleeping" – in fact, I generally like the idea of adopting new terminology. But I don't think that Glottolog can sytematically take into account the preferences of the speaker/signer communities, because these may be very variable. And when I mentioned Africa and Asia, I didn't mean linguists but communities (because Felicity had brought up the preferences of communities). Linguists (especially Euro-American linguists) working in Asia and Africa may well talk about "sleeping" languages in these regions, too, but I don't think that the communities do. In Europe, there are some revitalization activities (especially for some of the Celtic languages), but again, I have never heard "sleeping" in this context (however, I admit that I don't follow the revitalization scene closely).
@haspelmath Right okay, that wasn't how I read your previous message.
As I understand Glottolog's principles, more emphasis is placed on the usage among linguists and consistency, rather than preference by communities. This is mean to encourage consistent and objective treatment of all the languages in the catalogue. While I think this is a set of principles that could do with some modification to recognise the social responsibility linguists have in the world, for example the harm that can be done when heritage speakers look up their ancestors language and find it declared dead, I suspect that the most convincing argument I can lay our before the Glottolog editors in this particular case is the one that highlights the use of "Sleeping/dormant" in other authoritative works like the Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages and other catalogues. (Of course, these sources may be changing their terminology for reasons that have to do with social justice.)
It's perhaps not the most important reason to me, but I think an argument of fitting with the times and being consistent fits neater with what I know of Glottolog's editing principles so that's what I'd like to focus on.
Switching to "sleeping" has the following benefits that fit with what I know of Glottolog editing
- follows conventions in endangerment linguistics
- is more consistent (if the languages can be revitalised, "extinct" is hardly the appropriate term)
Robert and Martin have been involved, so maybe let's pause until we hear from @d97hah ?
I agree in principle that we have social responsibility, and as I said, I would be fine with "sleeping", but the responsibility of comparative linguistics is somewhat different from the responsibility of descriptive linguistics. We need to be scientifically accurate, and we should avoid decisions that cause the speakers or the communities distress. But what if there is a conflict between these two? For example, I heard that in some cases, dialects of the same language have been able to keep their separate SIL/ISO codes so that the communities do not lose their government funding. I don't think that Glottolog information should be used in this way (these governments should do their own research), but it's clear that our information is sometimes used for such purposes. It's probably fair to expect that our priority should always be scientific accuracy.
That's why I wanted to focus on the two arguments in favour of this change that I believe are in line with the editing principles of Glottolog. I don't know of a conflict of this kind in this instance and I don't want to think up problems that I don't have reason to believe exists.
Is it possible to pause until @d97hah comes around?
Re the reasons formulated in the last post by Hedvig:
- follows conventions in endangerment linguistics
- is more consistent (if the languages can be revitalised, "extinct" is hardly the appropriate term)
Afaik the ongoing convention change in EL does not imply a wholesale change from Extinct -> Dormant, it only does for the cases with an identifiable community. I don't know what "consistent" means in the above, acc to e.g. https://www.lexico.com/definition/extinct revivability is logically consistent with the label extinct. If it means "predictively accurate" it's obvious that a wholesale 'extinct' is a better prediction than a wholesale 'revitalised'.
More generally I think Glottolog wants a value-neutral label. If extinct is not value-neutral because it is negative it should be changed, but if sleeping/dormant is not value-neutral because it is positive, we don't want that either. Acc to online dictionaries I can't see that 'extinct' is a negatively charged label, but then those dictionaries are not context specific. The claims that 'extinct' is a demoralizing label I have seen look ambiguous between (i) the idea that the label is demoralizing and (ii) the idea that the label is not, but the state described by it is demoralizing. If (ii) then we can't find a scientifically accurate label which isn't demoralizing. Maybe someone who knows better can enlighten me how (i) and (ii) can be distinguished. all the best, H
Pada tanggal Sen, 8 Mar 2021 pukul 12.38 Hedvig Skirgård < [email protected]> menulis:
That's why I wanted to focus on the two arguments in favour of this change that I believe are in line with the editing principles of Glottolog. I don't know of a conflict of this kind in this instance and I don't want to think up problems that I don't have reason to believe exists.
Is it possible to pause until @d97hah https://github.com/d97hah comes around?
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Maybe it's best to switch to numbers, then? With 6 different states, this may still be mnemonic enough.
@xrotwang Personally, I don't think switching to further abstraction in terms of numbers is desirable at all. It just obfuscates.
@d97hah I don't think most people think of things which aren't languages declared as "extinct" as revivable, other than in the ancient jurassic park sense. If that is a meaning some people have of that term, I've not really encountered it before.
If there are two terms that are not value-neutral, I think you should choose the one that does least harm.
I think there's enough examples that show that "extinct" in linguistics is negatively charged. This is the reason that we're having this discussion at all and that other people are avoiding the term. I think that (i) is a valid case and that is possible to distinguish the two by the sheer fact that revitalisation efforts exist. Languages being sleeping is in most cases also undesirable, but at least there is a suggestion that something else is possible. I don't think this is as common a reading for "extinct", regardless of what some online non-context specific dictionaries may say.
Obfuscation of the type that forces people to lookup the longer descriptions might be the best we can achieve here.
I think you overestimate the general public's willingness to read long descriptions without practical headings Robert. If you aren't able to do like EGDIS and ELCat and have the two categories "extinct" and "dormant/sleeping", at least changing the term to "extinct/sleeping" would honestly be a step up I believe.
maybe reverse the order? sleeping/extinct. On the point of "neutral" terms, I'm not sure that there are any neutral terms here. 'Extinct' may be neutral for some but is definitely negative for others, and 'sleeping' is positive for some but neutral (or at least not negative) for others. Linguists aren't neutral players in these questions, however much we would like to think we are. Extinct is specifically charged in language work in part because of the 'neutral' linguists who told communities that their languages were dead, when they weren't or when that finality closed off reclamation work (which is different to creating lots of fluent language users but is nonetheless usually pretty positive for the communities that do that work).
On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 11:12 AM Hedvig Skirgård [email protected] wrote:
I think you overestimate the general public's willingness to read long descriptions without practical headings Robert. If you aren't able to do like EGDIS and ELCat and have the two categories "extinct" and "dormant/sleeping", at least changing the term to "extinct/sleeping" would honestly be a step up I believe.
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Claire Bowern Professor Editor: Diachronica Department of Linguistics, Yale University she/her or they/them
I still think moving to numbers may be the best thing to do here. If that lessens the impact of Glottolog in this area for the general public, that may actually be a good thing: For people which read up on the definition, the Glottolog numbers will be usable, while the others will at least not be offended.
on the other hand, glottolog could have a positive educational role here. Would that be a bad thing?
On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 11:24 AM Robert Forkel [email protected] wrote:
I still think moving to numbers may be the best thing to do here. If that lessens the impact of Glottolog in this area for the general public, that may actually be a good thing: For people which read up on the definition, the Glottolog numbers will be usable, while the others will at least not be offended.
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Claire Bowern Professor Editor: Diachronica Department of Linguistics, Yale University she/her or they/them
It wouldn't be a bad thing, but it would be a different role, and an additional one when we are already struggling to do what we consider the core business of Glottolog. ElCat seems to be much better equipped to take over such a role.
Glottolog doesn't need to take on a wider general public role if it doesn't want to. We're talking fairly small things here, all things considering.
If Glottolog's AES is purely meant to be an aggregate of EGDIS, UNESCO's atlas and ElCat, then using the term "sleeping/extinct" or rejigging the mappings so that the "dormant" category of EGDIS and ELCAT becomes "dormant" or sleeping" would still be in line with a more narrow focus on serving the scientific community primarily. In fact, the current mapping is questionable.
Here's a figure from the AES paper, this is the link you should have justification for. Mapping both "dormant" and "extinct" to "extinct" is a noteworthy decision.
So, since we are investigating AES and its history here: IIRC, this table only had the EGIDS numbers in the AES column originally. Also labeling this as "fairly small things" doesn't really help. Glottolog has evolved a software eco-system around it, and we are talking about a change of the external interface of this system. I.e. changes will require changes of processing software. That's actual work someone has to do, and changing to numbers-only may minimize the possibility that we have to change things again.
@xrotwang That's a very fair point. I didn't mean to say it's no work, just in comparison to related efforts that are going on. Switching to numbers internally, and having terms to match them fetched from one place for glottoscope etc makes sense to me. Then there'd only be one place to update. Switching to numbers entirely makes less sense, but I can see the point.
I think Glottolog stepping into the endangerment statistics world was an interesting move. It seems to me that Glottolog is doing a lot of great things, but perhaps not with the support all of those things require. I try to limit my expectations of the catalogue to what seems to be the aim and the target audience, in this case it seemed like this change would be in line with the aims of the project and the expected user base.
Yes I am in absolute agreement with Hedwig and Claire on this. We are risking alienating the communities we work with by persisting with labels like “extinct” and “dormant” and I think we have to get in step with endangered language communities. All labels have negative and positive weight. There are no emotionally neutral labels which is not surprising. We can’t pretend to be neutral scientists, particularly in the social sciences. Why we would side with labels which are clearly offensive to the people who speak or identify with endangered languages is beyond me.
From: Hedvig Skirgård [email protected] Reply to: glottolog/glottolog [email protected] Date: Tuesday, 9 March 2021 at 4:16 am To: glottolog/glottolog [email protected] Cc: Felicity Meakins [email protected], Comment [email protected] Subject: Re: [glottolog/glottolog] "extinct" -> "sleeping" (#660)
I think Glottolog stepping into the endangerment statistics world was an interesting move. It seems to me that Glottolog is doing a lot of great things, but perhaps not with the support all of those things require. I try to limit my expectations of the catalogue to what seems to be the aim and the target audience, in this case it seemed like this change would be in line with the aims of the project and the expected user base.
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@FelicityMeakins I'll try to explain my (thus partly Glottolog's) position. It seems clear that choosing the labels for things we talk about is a process, i.e. labels change and our usage of labels changes. The fact that we are discussing this issue here means that Glottolog takes part in this process, and while offensive labels are present in the historic record of Glottolog data this does not mean that Glottolog "is siding with labels which are clearly offensive".
To me, the situation here is analogous to the problems GitHub faced with labels like "master" for the default branch in its git repositories. They now changed - for newly created repositories - the default to "main". But that must have been quite an effort at GitHub, and it did cause quite a bit of disruption downstream. It certainly did cost me some effort and still costs. I think GitHub did the right thing, but they also risked "alienating the community" they work for. Also, the offensive label still persists for many many existing repositories.
Glottolog is in the process of assessing the disruption of changing labels, and I personally am trying to figure out how and when to factor these changes into my schedule. I also care about the community using Glottolog data and the disruption this may cause for them, and while this may be a minor concern, I think it's still valid.
I sympathise with Roberts considerations for the long-term structure maintenance. It makes a lot of sense to me to use numbers internally for however many categories there are to be, and then map them to descriptive labels which are stored in one place. That way an update there would possible ripple out to visualisations like glottoscope etc.
I think that perhaps this is two different discussions: a) the technicalities and sustainability of the meta-information encoding system and b) the semantics of the meta-information system itself.
I would suggest that the numbers are still mapped to shorter text-strings somewhere and that this is what's used in visualisations etc, but I understand if this is tricky as well.
@FelicityMeakins As I said, I'm not attached to any legacy labels, but I strongly disagree with the idea that "We can’t pretend to be neutral scientists, particularly in the social sciences." On the contrary, we can be trusted and taken seriously as scientists only if our scientific work is neutral on political and advocacy issues (this is true for all branches of science). This does not mean, of course, that as individuals we cannot (or should not) also engage in advocacy. If we cannot do our scientific (and politically neutral) work without offending (some) people, we should perhaps not do this work. A practical consequence of this may be that sociolinguistic classifications should never use transparent labels, but only numbers (like the EGIDS level numbers). These numbers might eventually become offensive, too, and at that point we might have to stop doing this kind of research.