Robert Wilson, Visiting Assistant Professor, UNT. Uyghur Language Vitality and
Endangerment ... regional capital. This poster will display an analysis of the ...
Robert Wilson, Visiting Assistant Professor, UNT Uyghur Language Vitality and Endangerment The Uyghur Autonomous Region of Central Asia (also known as Xinjiang, China), is a resource-‐rich and geopolitically important location. This region is sometimes referred to as “the other Tibet” because Uyghurs, like Tibetans, must contend with various forms of discrimination, yet the Uyghurs are less known in the West. Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people, and Han Chinese are the majority ethnic communities in the Uyghur Autonomous Region; they co-‐exist in a heavily militarized state of peace. From August 2008 through April 2010, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Urumchi, the regional capital. This poster will display an analysis of the Uyghur language in reference to the Language Vitality and Endangerment Assessment (2003), an instrument produced by the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. This instrument proposes nine factors to assess language endangerment and urgency for documentation. The first six factors evaluate a language’s vitality and state of endangerment: Intergenerational Language Transmission; Absolute Number of Speakers; Proportion of Speakers within the Total Population; Trends in Existing Language Domains; Response to New Domains and Media; and Materials for Language Education and Literacy. Two factors assess language attitudes: Governmental and Institutional Language Attitudes and Policies, Including Official Status and Use; and Community Members’ Attitudes toward Their Own Language. And one factor evaluates the urgency for documentation: Amount and Quality of Documentation. This poster will assess the Uyghur language of the Uyghur ethnolinguistic community of Xinjiang according to the above factors. I will include suggestions regarding the role of speech communities and external specialists in supporting endangered languages, along with remarks on the shared responsibility of individual language specialists, local speaker community, NGOs, and governmental and institutional organizations in language maintenance and perpetuation.
