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Vitality and Viability of Minority Languages

Vitality and Viability of Minority Languages
Friday, October 23, 2009

On Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24, Trace Foundation will host the third event in its lecture series Minority Language in Today’s Global Society, which is entitled Vitality and Viability of Minority Languages. While many minority language communities recognize the need to maintain their languages, what are some tools available to help them gauge the relative health of their language and language communities? What kinds of policies have worked to support and maintain the vitality and viability of minority languages? What practices might be appropriate for various communities attempting to maintain their languages? This event will bring together experts from diverse backgrounds to pursue answers to such questions surrounding assessment of language vitality, policies to support viability, and practices to ensure a flourishing future for minority languages, with a special focus on the Tibetan language case.

Trowo Gyaltsen

Trowo Gyaltsen
Barkham Nationalities Normal School, Ngawa Prefecture, Sichuan Province
senior lecturer

Trowo Gyaltsen graduated with a degree in philosophy and went on to teach political theory at the Barkham Nationalities Normal School. He is the editor-in-chief of the Tibetan- and Chinese-language journal, Tibetan Regions Education Forum, which explores issues such as Tibetan regions education systems, mother tongue education in bilingual education, and more. He published a collection of essays on philosophy entitled The Allure of the Light of Reason. He has written many important papers that have been influential in Tibetan education practice today.

Elliot Sperling

Elliot Sperling
MacArthur Foundation
Professor

Professor Sperling is a leading scholar of Tibetan history with a focus on Sino-Tibetan relations. A laureate of the 1984 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, his publications include numerous works examining interethnic relations of the Central Asian region from the early 14th century to the present. Among his published works are essays such as “Tibetan Buddhism, Perceived And Imagined, Along The Ming-Era Sino-Tibetan Frontier,” in Buddhism between Tibet and China (2009), The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics (2004), and “‘Orientalism’ and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition,” in Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies (2001).

Arienne Dwyer

Arienne Dwyer
Department of Anthropology, Kansas University
associate professor

Professor Dwyer is a specialist on language documentation and revitalization, was part of the 2004 UNESCO ad hoc Expert Committee on Language Endangerment which developed recent language vitality assessment tools. Her area of expertise is in the sociolinguistics of Chinese and Central Asian languages and she has directed several projects to document and archive languages of these regions, including Salar, Kazakh, Uyghur, Mongour, Wutun, Kyrgyz, and also archaic German dialects in Kansas.

Jaye Trabu

Jaye Trabu
Nationalities Normal College, Qinghai Normal University
professor and vice-dean

Professor Jaye Trabu is a renowned scholar of Tibetan grammar, folk culture, and history. He holds degrees from Qinghai Nationalities College and Beijing Normal University. He has numerous publications ranging from literary pieces, classical and contemporary poetry to essays on the relationship between religious folk customs and ecological equilibrium, educational reform, and Tibetan festivals, foods, and dress. His most recent publications include edited books entitled Tibetan Language Textbook for University (སློབ་གྲྭ་ཆེན་མོའི་བོད་ཀྱི་སྐད་ཡིག་སློབ་དེབ།) .

Joseph Lo Bianco

Joseph Lo Bianco
Language and Literacy Education, Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne
professor and chair

Professor Lo Bianco has served as a consultant on language education policy in over twenty countries, including Sri Lanka, Thailand, the United States, China, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom. He is the author of Australia’s first National Policy on Languages, which was established in 1987. Most recently, he has edited several books including Language Learning from the Inside: Learners’ Voices & Public Policy Ambitions, and China and English: Globalization and Dilemmas of Identity. Both his policy contributions and writings have been recognized through numerous awards in Australia and internationally

Thubten Phuntsok

Thubten Phuntsok
Tibetology Institute, Central Nationalities University
senior professor

Thubten Phuntsok is a prolific scholar of Tibetan Studies with dozens of books and numerous articles published in the fields of Tibetan history, Tibetan medicine, and Tibetan literature, grammar, and poetry. Originally a Tibetan medicine doctor in his hometown of Derge, he has an academic background in archeology and Tibetology. He is currently a professor and researcher in the department of Tibetan Studies at the Central Nationalities University in Beijing, China. He is also the director of the Tibetan Medical Institute and the president of Tibetan AIDS Prevention Association. He has won many national awards for his publications on language, history, religion, and medicine.

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