Intersections of gender and endangered languages

A commentary

Authors

  • Jillian R. Cavanaugh Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v6i2.369

Keywords:

commentary, gender, language revitalization

Abstract

In this commentary, I discuss this collection of articles by Wertheim, Ahlers, Adkins and Davis, and Leonard focusing on gender and language revitalization in order to draw out sites of overlap and difference. I identify the following 4 themes as emerging from these pieces: the construction of diverse types of gendered selves; gender as implicated in divides between public and private spheres of interaction; the production of authenticity as central to language revitalization and heritage movements more broadly; and how such projects involve a balance between individual selves and goals and those of the community, arising from the many points of hybridity, overlap and conflict that arise between these and the dominant communities in which they are embedded.

Author Biography

  • Jillian R. Cavanaugh, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

    Jillian R. Cavanaugh is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist whose research is based in northern Italy. Her interests include language shift and endangerment, language and gender, language and politics, language and materiality, and food as cultural value and practice. In addition to her book, Living Memory: The Social Aesthetics of Language in a Northern Italian Town (Wiley Blackwell), she has published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Language and Communication, Language in Society, and Ethnos.

References

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Published

2012-09-10

How to Cite

Cavanaugh, J. R. (2012). Intersections of gender and endangered languages: A commentary. Gender and Language, 6(2), 369-378. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v6i2.369