New Technologies, Same Ideologies: Learning from Language Revitalization Online

Abstract

Ease of access, production, and distribution have made online technologies popular in language revitalization. By incorporating multimodal resources, audio, video, and games, they attract indigenous communities undergoing language shift in hopes of its reversal. However, by merely expanding language revitalization to the web, many language learning websites often include already existing language ideologies seen in existing resources. Many of the ideologies reported for Native North American languages can be harmful to language maintenance. In particular, such problems as limited social ecology of language use, elder purism, reliance on memorization, and others have been widely reported to be the “stumbling blocks” in language revitalization. Through examining different types of Algonquian websites, this study demonstrates that these language ideologies are not unique to classroom instruction but often are reiterated online. The unique advantage of the online resources, however, is their flexibility and diversity which allow language revitalization workers to implement many different instructional designs. In appealing to different types of learners through using various types of language instruction, some online language learning resources can not only diversify language learning but also re-contextualize the indigenous language. The online space becomes a useful tool for supplying alternative teaching materials, histories, and contexts. Through such representation of the language, this study argues, online language revitalization can engage a wider audience and fulfill the goals of cultural revival. This study recommends broadening the contextual instructions, various procedures, and including more language learners in the creation of the materials.