Robert Wilson, Visiting Assistant Professor, UNT Uyghur Language ...

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.