Linguapunks!

[Taronyu]

SURPRISE! I'M STARTING A NEW PROJECT. yeah, that is completely out of character, isn't it?

Anyway, taking this one slow. But here's the manifesto. My writing this has been very influenced by my time here on LN.

http://burntfen.net/linguistics/punk.php

The Linguəpunk Manifesto


by Richard Littauer
What We Are:

Linguəpunks are those who stand for open source and freely available linguistics education, documentation equipment and software, and linguistic corpora and research. Linguəpunks represent another way of thinking about language ownership, and are not concerned overmuch with a perceived counter-cultural identity. Linguəpunks believe that the task of recording languages, endangered or not, should not just be kept to universities and academia but that the responsibility must be shared with those that speak the very languages that are in danger. Linguəpunks support with working with communities, whether local or academic, to bring about widely-available free education about linguistics.
About Linguistics and Language Documentation Currently:

Linguistic literacy is necessary in order to sustain linguistic biodiversity in the modern era. There are half a dozen thousand languages in the world, each inextricably tied to a culture and a history. Every fortnight, another one of these libraries dies, taking with it part of the totality of human culture.

Linguists are tasked with understanding the processes of language. Language documentation is the science of taking a language in the field, recording its unique words, sounds, and grammar. Many linguists are working hard at documenting endangered language, as they are called, before they pass away.

However, there are several issues with current approaches towards endangered language documentation and revitalisation. First, understanding Language as a whole is difficult, and becoming a professional 'linguist' is a long and arduous process that involves years of study and much money. These linguists must then make it their job to find funding to allow for them to study endangered languages. They must then gather the approval of their financial supporters as well as the speech community they study before they are able to approach the data.

Then, they must utilise their linguistics education and whatever professional linguistic documentation tools they can to record a language. This often involves months of research and planning, as well as permission from each speaker who participates in the documentation process. After this, all of the data must be meticulously poured over, checked for errors, organised, and analysed. Finally, that information must often be published in an academic setting for it to be internationally recognised as official research on a language. Finally, in the end funding must be found to produce material, such as a grammar or dictionary or children's book, which can be given back to the language community that was originally studied.

All of these hurdles must be passed in order to satisfactorily document a language.

Our Manifesto:

We the Linguəpunks think that the majority of these steps are unnecessary. We feel that treating linguistics as a inaccessible and incomprehensible science that needs extensive university training to understand, fiscal support to impliment, and academic approval is detrimental to the ultimate goal of language documentation - saving as much as we can of languages which will soon be gone. We feel that treating linguistic information or research as something which can be owned is detrimental to language communities. We feel strongly that linguistic understanding must not be left only in the hands of professionally trained linguists, although they should and must be integral in our movement, as an overabundance of enthusiasm but a lack of training can be detrimental. For this reason, linguistics education must come first, using or following established linguistic pedagogical tools and materials.

Because of this, we the Linguəpunks seek to provide open source, highest-quality, free research tools, internet resources, educational courses, and platforms for storing, analysing, and ultimately disseminating knowledge about language.

Research requires tools, and free inquiry requires that access to tools be unfettered. We are developing low-cost laboratory equipment and off-the-shelf protocols that are accessible to the average citizen. As political actors, we support open journals, open collaboration, and free access to publicly-funded research, and we oppose laws that would criminalise the possession of research equipment or the private pursuit of inquiry.

We the Linguəpunks are dedicated to putting the tools of linguistic investigation into the hands of anyone who wants them. We are building an infrastructure of methodology, of communication, of automation, and of publicly available knowledge about language.

We cannot expect governments, corporations, universities, or any established presences to automatically help us or support our cause of open source, free dissemination of knowledge. We cannot expect the linguistic community to support us entirely, either: most of what we do is on a personal level, with grassroots representation, as we hold that any person able to speak a tongue should be able to have full access to any information about it.

Linguəpunks deplore restrictions on independent research, for the right to arrive independently at an understanding of the world around oneself is a fundamental human right. Curiosity knows no ethnic, gender, age, or socioeconomic boundaries, but the opportunity to satisfy that curiosity all too often turns on economic opportunity, and we aim to break down that barrier. A thirteen-year-old kid in Singapore has just as much of a right to investigate and learn Singlish or Lakota as does a university professor. If he cannot attend university to learn how to do it, we will teach him ourselves.

Linguəpunks welcome questions, and we desire nothing more than to empower you to discover the answers to them yourselves. We welcome criticism, for without peer review, there can be no assurance of correct judgements. We welcome grammaticality judgements, for they teach us about another persons idiolect, dialect, and language. We even welcome disapproval, for we feel that everything is corpora, and can be studied. Even negatives.

There will be errors in our research; where we find them, we will learn. There will be flaws in our methodology; when we notice, we will start again. There will be some communities where a small minority, often of elders or respected persons, will seek to control pedagogical materials or linguistic information; when we are condemned for allowing any information, good or bad, to be shared, and when we are condemned for allowing analysation that may go against normative or prescriptivist practices, we will rise up and say that we who speak a language should have unlimited access to it, and that we as humans should have the right to learn and understand all languages.

We the Linguəpunks think that any person has the right to learn about all languages, to learn and document all languages, to share information about all languages, and especially her or his own. We seek to facilitate this. Come, let us strive together.

What Now?:

We're getting there. Spreading the word is the best thing you can do to support the movement - no single agent or player will cause this to truly turn into a social force, and no single person can cause global education or linguistic documentation.

If you have coding skills, and are interested in setting up a linguistics site to start the movement with a home, please contact me at linguepunk at gmail.
Notes:

This is based loosely on the Biopunk Manifesto and the Cypherpunk Manifesto.
To type Linguəpunks in Html: Linguəpunks. The /ə/ is, of course, a schwa.

[Tsäroltxe te Eyrutì Tantse'itan]

That is a great project!

[Le'eylan]

That is a great project!

Indeed it is.

[Kì'eyawn]

This is awesome, ma 'eylan!  I was just thinking the other day about how i wish there were more info about languages/dialects accessible to non-linguists.