International Journal of Bilingualism For Peer Review Towards a coherent methodology for the documentation of small-scale multilingualism: Dealing with speech data Journal: International Journal of Bilingualism Manuscript ID IJB-20-0108.R2 Manuscript Type: Special Issue: Typology of Small-Scale Multilingualism small-scale multilingualism, rural Africa, language documentation, Keywords: methodology, ethnographic approaches Purpose: To contribute to the establishment of a novel approach to language documentation that includes bilingual and multilingual speech data. This approach would open this domain of study to work by specialists of bilingualism and multilingualism. Approach: Within language documentation, the approach adopted in this paper exemplifies the “contemporary communicative ecology” mode of documentation. This radically differs from the “ancestral code” mode of documentation that characterizes most language documentation corpora. Within the context of multilingualism studies, this paper advocates for the inclusion of a strong ethnographic component to research on multilingualism. Data and Analysis: The data presented comes from a context Abstract: characterized by small-scale multilingualism, and the analyses provided are by and large focused on uncovering aspects of local metapragmatics. Conclusions: Conducting language documentation in contexts of small- scale multilingualism requires that the adequacy of a corpus is assessed with regard to sociolinguistic, rather than only structural linguistic, requirements. The notion of sociolinguistic adequacy is discussed in detail in analytical terms and illustrated through an example taken from ongoing research led by the authors. Originality: To date, there are no existing publications reviewing in the detail provided here how the documentation of multilingual speech in contexts of small-scale multilingualism should be carried out. The contribution is highly original, in particular, for its theoretical grounding of the proposed approach. http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/IJB Page 1 of 30 International Journal of Bilingualism 1 2 3 4 Significance/Implications: This article can serve as a reference for those 5 interested in methodological and theoretical concerns relating to the 6 practice of language documentation in contexts of small-scale 7 multilingualism across the world. It may also help clarify ways for 8 sociolinguists to engage more closely with work on language 9 documentation, a domain that has thus far remained primarily informed by structural linguistic approaches. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 For Peer Review 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/IJB International Journal of Bilingualism Page 2 of 30 1 2 3 Towards a coherent methodology for the documentation of small-scale multilingualism: 4 Dealing with speech data 5 6 Pierpaolo Di Carlo 7 8 University at Buffalo 9 Rachel A. Ojong Diba 10 University of Buea 11 12 Jeff Good 13 University at Buffalo 14 15 Purpose: To contribute to the establishment of a novel approach to language documentation 16 17 that includes bilingual and multilingual speech data. This approach would open this domain of 18 study to work by specialists of bilingualism and multilingualism. 19 20 Approach: Within language documentation, the approach adopted in this paper exemplifies 21 the “contemporary communicativeFor Peer ecology” Reviewmode of documentation. This radically differs 22 from the “ancestral code” mode of documentation that characterizes most language 23 documentation corpora. Within the context of multilingualism studies, this paper advocates 24 for the inclusion of a strong ethnographic component to research on multilingualism. 25 26 27 Data and Analysis: The data presented comes from a context characterized by small-scale 28 multilingualism, and the analyses provided are by and large focused on uncovering aspects of 29 local metapragmatics. 30 31 Conclusions: Conducting language documentation in contexts of small-scale multilingualism 32 requires that the adequacy of a corpus is assessed with regard to sociolinguistic, rather than 33 only structural linguistic, requirements. The notion of sociolinguistic adequacy is discussed in 34 detail in analytical terms and illustrated through an example taken from ongoing research led 35 36 by the authors. 37 38 Originality: To date, there are no existing publications reviewing in the detail provided here 39 how the documentation of multilingual speech in contexts of small-scale multilingualism 40 should be carried out. The contribution is highly original, in particular, for its theoretical 41 grounding of the proposed approach. 42 43 Significance/Implications: This article can serve as a reference for those interested in 44 45 methodological and theoretical concerns relating to the practice of language documentation in 46 contexts of small-scale multilingualism across the world. It may also help clarify ways for 47 sociolinguists to engage more closely with work on language documentation, a domain that 48 has thus far remained primarily informed by structural linguistic approaches. 49 50 51 52 1 Small-scale multilingualism and language documentation 53 54 Arising out of concerns about language endangerment (Hale et al. 1992), and still mostly 55 conducted in endangerment contexts, language documentation (henceforth LD) has provided a 56 wealth of new data that has mostly supported the agenda of structural linguists (e.g., 57 58 59 60 1 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/IJB Page 3 of 30 International Journal of Bilingualism 1 2 3 typologists, syntacticians, phonologists, etc).1 Work within LD has been carried out mainly by 4 adopting a mode of documentation focusing on “ancestral codes”, an expression coined by 5 Woodbury (2005, 2011) to refer to the process of creating a documentary corpus theorized 6 7 (i.e., ideated) in terms of adherence to one specific language (or code) that is in danger of 2 8 fading out of use in a given speech community. As a result, the overwhelming majority of the 9 LD corpora produced to date are focused on monolingual data only (see also Epps, this 10 volume, on the need to go beyond the “ancestral code” in LD). 11 It is clear that this monolingual bias reflects more (Western) scholarly agendas rather than 12 the lived reality of speech communities. For one thing, contexts of endangerment are, by 13 14 definition, contexts of language shift, and this obviously implies that communities impacted 3 15 by endangerment are in fact bilingual or multilingual. However interesting from a scientific 16 point of view, it is understandable that documenting multilingual speech in contexts of 17 language shift may be seen as a paradoxical (if not masochistic) choice for a linguist working 18 on the documentation of an endangered language with an eye on language maintenance or 19 revitalization like many documenters are. Funding bodies also may promote a monolingual 20 bias, even if this is unintentional. 21 For Peer Review 22 The lived multilingual realities of an endangered language speech community may fall 23 much more clearly within the scope of a “sensitive” documenter if we consider them from a 24 different perspective. Recent literature has made abundantly clear that multilingualism in 25 contexts of language endangerment is in many cases not to be ascribed only to the process of 26 language shift, but is also engendered by indigenous societal dynamics (see, e.g., Cobbinah et 27 al. (2017), Di Carlo (2018), Epps (2018), Singer (2018), and Rumsey (2018)). 28 In post-colonial contexts, which account for a large part of language endangerment 29 30 contexts, if multilingualism is widespread within a certain speech community, then this is 31 likely due to the interplay of two distinct dynamics. On the one hand, the colonial past has 32 produced specific social and cultural dynamics relating to key areas of social life such as, for 33 example, social hierarchy, power, and conceptions of identity, which constitute the major 34 features of the sociolinguistic life of those societies today, especially in growing cities. This 35 dynamic is tightly connected with the spread of ex-colonial languages and, to some degree, 36 37 also of certain lingua francas—such as Cameroon Pidgin English in Anglophone Cameroon 38 (see, e.g., Menang 2004). 39 On the other hand, the indigenous societal contexts continue pre-colonial dynamics which, 40 to varying degrees, still provide ground for the reproduction of certain “endogenous” 41 sociolinguistic processes often characterized by small-scale, relatively egalitarian social 42 43 44 1We would like to acknowledge audience members at the Typology of small-scale multilingualism conference 45 held at the Collegium de Lyon, April 15–17, 2019, for their input on the research underlying this paper as well as 46 the editors of the special issue and three anonymous reviewers on the manuscript itself. One reviewer, in 47 particular, provided a series of insightful comments which we were not in a position to address in this paper, but 48 which we hope to consider in future work. The research reported on here has been supported by NSF Awards 49 BCS-1360763 and BCS-1761639. The order of authors reflects the fact that the first two authors contributed 50 more or less equally to the paper, while the last author’s contribution was more limited. The first author 51 contributions focused on, in particular, the overall theoretical framing of the paper, the second author provided 52 key data, analyses, and consideration of practical concerns related to research of the sort described here, and the 53 third author provided general contributions to the overall structure and framing of the paper and also contributed 54 to the text itself. 2 55 In this paper, we focus our consideration on communities characterized primarily by the use of spoken 56 languages, rather than sign languages. We leave open here the extent to which the arguments in this paper need 57 to be adapted for multilingual ecologies including one or more sign languages.