Many hands lighten the load: how the internet supports language activism
As the internet expands, clearing space for more cultures to flourish, the potential for language reclamation will grow.
Thank you to Daniel Bögre Udell for providing the history of the Tunica language and reclamation movement. This post stems from our recent panel session at RightsCon and pulls from multiple interviews and conversations. If you participated in RightsCon online 2020, you can watch the full recording of the session here.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that minoritized language communities face is cultural displacement by a dominant language. Without institutional support, minoritized languages are gradually restricted to the private sphere; without the expectation that they can be used as primary languages in public, speakers struggle to find one another. The rise of virtual communities living within social media provides a solution to language diasporas, wherein speakers (or language learners) are not all located in a geographically bound area, overcoming the distance through communicating together online. These breathing areas in the digital sphere demonstrate how the theories of language reclamation and renewal must begin with the speakers themselves — with people creating language moments in…
