Academic Reference:
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad & Monaghan, Paul (2012). "Revival linguistics and the new media: Talknology in the service of the Barngarla language reclamation", pp. 119-126 of Foundation for Endangered Languages XVI Conference: Language Endangerment in the 21st Century:Globalisation, Technology & New Media. Auckland, New Zealand.
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Revival Linguistics and the New Media:
Talknology in the service of the Barngarla Language Reclamation
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[
ghilad.zuckermann@adelaide.edu.au]
Paul Monaghan
Mobile Language Team
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[
paul.monaghan@adelaide.edu.au]
Abstract
Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (see Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).
The study: The Barngarla language (spelled Parnkalla by Schürmann 1844) is a no-longer spoken Thura-Yura Pama-Nyungan Aboriginal language of the Lakes Cultural Region of South Australia. Most recently Zuckermann, Monaghan and the Barngarla community have launched a reclamation of this sleeping beauty in three major rural/urban centres on the Eyre Peninsula, namely Port Lincoln, Whyalla, and Port Augusta. The presence of three Barngarla populations several hours drive apart presents the revival linguist with a need for a sophisticated reclamation involving ‘talknological’ innovations, such as online chatting, newsgroups, photo and resource sharing through a Barngarla wiki. This paper also examines the tensions accompanying the creation of a Barngarla ‘community of practice’ (cf. Wenger 1998) in a post-traditional Aboriginal context. In important ways, the new talknology poses a direct challenge to existing authority structures relating to the everyday management of knowledge, collaboration and participation. We predict that how the broader Barngarla community negotiates these issues will have an important bearing on the ultimate results of the reclamation project.
Revival Linguistics
Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).
Revival Linguistics complements the established field of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep. Revival Linguistics ought to revise the fields of grammaticography (writing grammars) and lexicography (writing dictionaries): Grammars and dictionaries ought to be written for language reclamation, i.e. in a user-friendly way, for communities, not only for linguists. For example, juxtapose Lutheran missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann’s 1844 spelling of the Barngarla word nunyara ‘recovery’, which ignores the English environment, thus resulting in the pronunciation nanYAra rather than NOONyara.
Closely related to contact linguistics, Revival Linguistics changes the field of historical linguistics, e.g. by weakening the Family Tree model, which implies that a language ought to have only one parent. Assisting Aboriginal communities in a realistic, non-purisitic way, without selling them myths, Revival Linguistics promotes efficiency and efficacy in language reclamation.
Certainly Australia has been made the ‘Unlucky Country’ through the historical processes of linguicide (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating). These twin forces were in operation from the early colonial period. In her detailed study of the role missionary language practices in the early years of the South Australian colony, Scrimgeour quotes the following colonial language ideology: ‘Mr Forster afterwards adverted to the present mode of teaching the children in their own language. He, with all respect to the Missionaries, would say, on several grounds, that this was wrong. The natives would be sooner civilized if their language was extinct. The children taught would afterwards mix only with whites, where their own language would be of no use – the use of their language would preserve their prejudices and debasement, and their language was not sufficient to express the ideas of civilized life. He gave the Missionaries full credit for their talents and zeal, but he thought it would be better to teach the children in English’ (from Report on a public meeting of the South Australian Missionary Society in aid of the German Mission to the Aborigines, Southern Australian, 8 September 1843; Scrimgeour, 2007: 116, italics added).
In the case of glottophagy, Governor George Grey noted: ‘The merchant in London who lays on a vessel for a certain port, regards the affair as a mere mercantile speculation, but could he trace out the results he effects in their remotest ramifications, he would stand astonished at the changes he produces. With the wizard wand of commerce, he touches a lone and trackless forest, and at his bidding, cities arise, and the hum and dust of trade collect – away are swept ancient races; antique laws and customs moulder into oblivion. The strong-holds of murder and superstition are cleansed, and the Gospel is preached amongst ignorant and savage men. The ruder languages disappear successively, and the tongue of England alone is heard around’ (Grey 1841: 200-201, italics added). Grey was a strong supporter of Aboriginal languages, encouraging Schürmann’s work documenting the Adelaide language (Kaurna) and Barngarla at Port Lincoln (see below).
With globalization, homogenization and Coca-colonization there will be more and more groups all over the world added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples. Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing. There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival: for example, social justice, diversity and employability, respectively.
Zuckermann (2012) has enthusiastically called for Native Tongue Title and linguistic human rights, suggesting that the Australian government ought to compensate Indigenous people not only for the loss of land but equally importantly for the loss of language. Zuckermann has suggested to the Australian government to define Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vernaculars as official languages.
Furthermore, it is predicted that in the future the very insights offered by Revival Linguistics will themselves become part of Indigenous Intellectual Property, when Slovenes and Estonians come to Australia and New Zealand to ask Aboriginal Australians and Maori to assist them in their own European language resurrection.
There is an urgent need to produce perspicacious LINGUISTIC and socio-linguistic insights relevant to language reclamation. Otherwise, linguists or language workers would not be able to offer, if asked by Indigenous people, efficient and efficacious advice. There are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and First Nations leaders to work more efficiently; for example, to focus more on basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than on sounds and word order – see Zuckermann (2009:
http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf.
Revival linguistics would assist revivalists to be more realistic and to abandon discouraging slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!" The following are among the basic principles that the revival linguist encourages in Aboriginal communities:
i. If your language falls asleep: stop, revive, survive!
ii. If you revive a language, embrace the hybridity of the emerging tongue; and
iii. If your language is healthy, assist others in linguistic need.
One day we may invent devices to “inject” a language into our brains. But until then, any attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues and, of course, the target language. In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
The Study
Figure 1: Map of Traditional Aboriginal Country after Norman Tindale (adapted from Hercus 1999)
The Barngarla language reclamation project has arisen through partnerships between the University of Adelaide (Linguistics and the Mobile Language Team) and the Barngarla people. Although still in its infancy, consultations began in September 2011, a number of very significant steps have been made towards reclaiming this ‘sleeping beauty’. Without doubt, the key challenge has been to develop a strategy for the reclamation of the language simultaneously and without favour in three major regional centres. In ways that will be elaborated below, this multi-sited, regional or peripheral reclamation makes demands that are very different to those often found in metropolitan reclamation contexts (e.g. Kaurna, cf. Amery 2000 and Amery 2012).
As implied above, for linguists, the first stage of any language revival must involve a long period of observation and careful listening while learning, mapping and characterizing the specific needs, desires and potentials of an indigenous or minority or culturally endangered community. Only then can one inspire and assist. Linguists are important but cannot provide what a united Aboriginal community can. That said, a crucial aspect of the Barngarla language reclamation project involves creating a virtual and actual community of practice (Wenger 1998).
Brief historical background
The Barngarla people and their neighbours were brought into contact with the world economic system through the whalers and sealers operating in their waters from the early years of the nineteenth century; these contacts predating official colonization by a number of decades (Brock & Kartinyeri 1989; cf. Clarke 1998). Unlike some other areas of the state, the area surrounding the Port Lincoln colony was a site for violent conflict between Aboriginal people and colonists (Brock & Kartinyeri 1989). By the time Clamor Schürmann arrived there in 1840, Port Lincoln and surrounds were still violent places. Poonindie Mission, near Port Lincoln, operated between 1860-1890s. After the mission closed, Barngarla people lived under the Aborigines Act, 1911, which was introduced inter alia to control the lives of Aboriginal people of mixed blood. Many of the current elder generation of people are members of the ‘Stolen Generation’, children taken away by government agencies and put through a process of cultural re-education with the ultimate aim of assimilation. Having survived this ‘civilizing process’ consisting of separation from family, country, culture and language, these people have sought to re-establish their cultural roots and to reconnect with their ancestors. The traumatic effects are deeply remembered and shared by other family members who did not experience these ordeals first hand. In many ways, these experiences and shared memories motivate the younger generations to be involved in the reclamation and to get language going again in everyday contexts.
Just before the reclamation began, there were no speakers of Barngarla at any level. Doyenne of Australian documentary linguists Luise Hercus recorded a very limited number of fragments in the 1960s. These recordings have been made available for the current project and for digital repatriation (underway).
All Barngarla people living in the towns described below speak a variety of Aboriginal English, sometimes called West Coast Talk, which includes words and phrases from a number of Aboriginal languages such as Pitjantjatjara, a strong Western Desert language spoken in Central Australia, north of Eyre Peninsula. Speakers of West Coast Talk do not usually know the particular language of origin of such distinctive words. Prima facie it appears that very few of the distinctive Aboriginal words have a Barngarla origin, indicating the long-past demise of the language. Another explanation is the migration from the 1950s of many Aboriginal families into these towns from the Far West Coast seeking employment. They brought with them the Nhangga Wanggarn, or West Coast Talk, from the Ceduna area, which consists principally of English with Wirangu and Gugada words and phrases added in. An obvious litmus test for our activities will be the increased appearance of Barngarla words in this everyday in-group language.
Figure 2: Barngarla Workshop participants (including Barngarla leader elder Howard Richards and revival linguist Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann), Port Lincoln, South Australia, April 2012.
It is worth making a brief comment on the state of neighbouring languages and their relation to Barngarla. Nauo is treated in the historical records as separate to Barngarla (Hercus & Simpson 2001), although it is considered by current Barngarla to be part of the broader umbrella of the Barngarla peoples. Schürmann only recorded 10 Nauo words. Very little else is known to exist. It is most likely that it ceased to be spoken in the mid to late nineteenth century. Wirangu and Gugada (‘Kukata’ in Figure 1) are both extremely endangered. Wirangu is related but Gugada is not (cf. Monaghan 2012). Nukunu is a related language but is known only in fragments (although Peter Mülhäusler is conducting research with a possible last speaker, cf. Hercus 1992). Kuyani is a related language documented by Luise Hercus, although not as yet written up. Not named on Figure 1 is Adnyamathana, a related language that is still spoken, albeit endangered. A number of groups are active in revival and maintenance and working with a number of linguists.
The three main centres of Barngarla residence on the Eyre Peninsula are Port Lincoln, Whyalla, and Port Augusta. All three are important regional centres. Port Augusta (Aboriginal/general population: 2360/13987 = 16.8%) is in many ways the crossroads of Australia. Whyalla, ‘the steel city’ where the outback meets the sea, has been dominated by mining and industry during its 100 year existence (Aboriginal/general population: 927/22539 = 4.1%). There is almost no Barngarla presence within the linguistic landscape of the town, and we were surprised to learn that the current Mayor does not know the proportion of the Aboriginal residents among the general population. Port Lincoln (Aboriginal/general population: 786/14087 = 5.5%) has a reputation for boasting a high proportion of (non-Aboriginal) millionaires among its residents. Fishing and agriculture are the key industries.
It is difficult to determine precise figures for the proportion of Barngarla within the total Aboriginal population. In both Port Lincoln and Whyalla, we heard the term ‘licorice all-sorts’ to describe those residing in these towns but do not have a traditional connection (that is, they do not fall under the definition of Traditional Owner under the Aborignal Heritage Act, 1988, for example). Monaghan (co-author) has not heard this term further west in Ceduna. An estimate of the Port Lincoln Barngarla population was provided as numbering 120. Further research is needed to complete this picture.
Figure 3: The authors (Monaghan left, Zuckermann centre) and Barngarla elder Ms Anita Taylor with the plans for Gabmididi Manoo (Barngarla for ‘learning together’) community and early learning centre (Barngarla Soil Turning Ceremony, Whyalla, March 2012)
While the Kaurna revival in Adelaide is arguably the most high-profile reclamation activity in Australia, it is not likely to be typical of the majority of revivals moving forward. This rests less on the lack of comparable materials to Teichelmann & Schürmann (1840), for example, than it does on the diasporic character of contemporary Aboriginal family groups. Apart from the well-noted mobility of Aboriginal people (e.g. Birdsall 1988, Beckett 1988), there are other demographic trends, such as out-marrying that will increasingly place pressure on the coherence of Aboriginal societies (cf. Sutton 2009: 212, who provides the figure ‘71.5 per cent in 2006’). From detailed empirical research at Ceduna, we know that a White father was a major cause of household language shift to English. A number of respondents explained that the White father did not want to hear language in the home. The obvious question arising here is how the presence of a non-Aboriginal father, which is increasingly likely, will affect the linguistic reclamation and revival chances. On the face of it, metropolitan and regional/peripheral programmes may be equally affected by this trend. Multi-sited regional approaches will be encouraged by the way Aboriginal youths (particularly young men) are encouraged to travel to find spouses and to avoid ‘incest’ (which in Aboriginal societies is often more broadly defined, sometimes to second or third cousins). There are many anecdotal reports of the current mining boom being a period of increased Aboriginal mobility.
A major implication of this mobility is the problem of traditional versus historical connection to country and hence language (a good discussion of how this operates in rural NSW can be found in Macdonald 1997). There is a very strong resistance in rural centres in South Australia for local schools to teach any Aboriginal language other than that of the traditional owners of the area. This leads to social conflict in a number of towns and most destructively often acts as a brake on language revival and maintenance activities. One local independent school in a rural town is happy to sit on the fence and wait until elders pass away and the problem disappears. Maybe, it was pointed out, the extremely endangered languages will go too.
Much of this conflict can be understood within the framework of extended-family politics (Sutton 2003). Asked how one would go about fashioning a language revival project with the ‘families of polity’, Sutton’s reply was ‘keep politics out of it. You’ll politicize the languages’ (pers. comm. July 2012). But arguably, in many cases the languages are already politicized and contested, particularly in the not-uncommon functional role as instrument for native title and our resource-rich fields (or at least they are perceived to be so). When the politics of identity and difference are involved, as they crucially often are, then we do well to heed the advice of that acute observer of social life, Zygmunt Bauman: when you hear the word identity ‘you can be sure that there is a battle going on’ (2004: 77) . Politics can be both a spur to action or a hindrance.
Some groups who identify with a tribal label – usually one of those represented on an authoritative map (such as Tindale 1974 and Horton 1994) – are scattered to all points of the continent. We know of one case where families who identify with the label ‘Tribe X’ are found in Queensland (QLD), New Territories (NT), New South Wales (NSW), and South Australia (SA). These groups do not constitute a community and the separate families do not all recognize each other as families of ‘Tribe X’. If empirical research reveals an increasing trend in this direction, then language revival activities will only become more critical but also more difficult a multi-sited, regional approach might be the best or even option.
Barngarla activities to date
Since the first meeting between senior Barngarla representative and the authors in September 2011, numerous meetings have been held in Adelaide, Whyalla, Port Lincoln and Port Augusta. In May 2012, the first Barngarla Reclamation Workshop was held in Port Lincoln (25 attendees over 2 days, see Figure 2). Another workshop was held in Whyalla in July 2012 (13 attendees). Apart from these major events, work has progressed on changing to a much more user-friendly spelling system. Zuckermann has handled an increasing number of requests for culturally-appropriate names for new buildings or simply single or multiple word requests from teachers, former workshop participants and the general public (having watched or read Zuckermann in the media). Compilation of archival resource materials on all things Barngarla is ongoing. To this end Zuckermann has secured sponsorship for a travelling delegation of Barngarla language enthusiasts and potential language workers to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS, Canberra, forthcoming). Work in ongoing to secure funding for a young Barngarla scholar to study linguistic at Adelaide and to become the first reclaimed Barngarla language expert.
Throughout these activities we have learned from our Barngarla partners that the advantages of a language revival movement go far beyond the actual ‘native speech’ results. From the point of view of Aboriginal empowerment and wellbeing, it is clearly not the case that if, at the end (if any) of the Barngarla revival process there is no all-encompassing native-speaking community that converses in the revived language in all semantic domains, then it will automatically imply that the revival was a failure. The revival process is as important as the revival goals. After the first workshop we received a number of unsolicited communications from participants that expressed their excitement and joy at having pleased their ancestors and gaining a new aspiration. An elder expressed that ‘we have watched other languages around us start to be revived, but we never thought it would happen to us’. A Barngarla woman wrote (in an unsolicited email to Zuckermann): ‘I found the experience of learning our language liberating and went home feeling very overwhelmed because we were finally going to learn our OWN language, it gave me a sense of identity… it gives you a purpose in life’.
Of course, the goals of a language revival movement can be very varied in the first place. For example, some communities might want only to change the ‘linguistic landscape’ of their town (like putting up Barngarla signs in Whyalla, which is very much on the agenda), others might want to have funerals and other rituals in language; others may want to go for the full monty. It is for the Aboriginal people to think these questions through; it is not for the linguist to pass normative value judgments and to set etic goals.
Mobile Language Team (MLT)
The MLT is a Federal Government funded project that, at the time of writing, is coming to the end of its first triennial phase of operation. The University of Adelaide has recently secured another round of funding and is about to commence another three-year period of activity. One of the major objectives for the first triennium was to develop an audit of the vitality and status of 44 Aboriginal languages in the state and to assess the potential within communities for revival and maintenance activities. Many of these communities are rural, which implies that the Mobile Language Team ought to provide Flying Linguist services, somewhat comparable to the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.
An important step in establishing our presence was to launch a website (
www.mobilelanguageteam.com.au), which provides information to communities and scholars, and which will be developed further in the second triennium to incorporate a greater range of services, such as designated language wikis. More generally, our strategy will become more subtle. Rather than, like an old apiarist, waiting for the bees to come, we will take the honey-pot to the bees. One example will be retaining the news feature of this site, but we will send out teasers through Facebook with links back to our site. Many of our constituents who prefer mobile phone technology to computers will greatly benefit from this development. The MLT will seek to develop a presence on Youtube, Flickr and other social networking sites.
Before moving on to discuss new technologies more fully, it is useful to mention an MLT-Linguistics seeding project. In 2010 the MLT took on a German masters student, Ms Anne Quandt, as a volunteer. During this time she became acquainted with Schürmann’s Barngarla dictionary and was co-supervised in her research (Quandt 2012). With this project we hoped to build a connection that would allow a new linguist to arrive and to connect with a waiting revival community. Currently Zuckermann is seeking funds for a PhD scholarship to continue this developmental strategy.
New Talknology
The following sections report on work in progress: the novelty of the Barngarla reclamation and its particular challenges are yet to be fully appreciated. It is possible to report some interesting observations at this early stage, nevertheless. Much has changed since the anthropologist Eric Michaels was engaged by the peak Aboriginal research institute in the 1980s to undertake a three-year research programme into the interaction between traditional Aboriginal people and electronic media (Michaels 1985). As Hobson (2010: 309) points out, hardly a project is run these days that does not involve information and communication technology (ICT) in some form or another. Despite this ubiquity, however, there is often a problem with continuity – either once the project is complete from a reporting point of view or a newfangled gismo turns up and creates a linguistic stampede. Dyson & Brady (2010) also point to the problem of abrupt endings. Monaghan witnessed a stark example of technological dumping at the Solomon Islands National Museum in 2008 while running a programme to digitally repatriate material culture items and to record intangible cultural heritage connected to them to be stored with the objects in Sydney. During the Solomon Island ‘Tensions’ the museum was looted and the traditional currencies (such as shell money and red feather money) were taken. In the museum store their shelves laid empty while elsewhere in the complex piles of electronic equipment lay undisturbed. Much of this equipment had been donated by Japanese cultural heritage projects that had a short shelf life. The cultural heritage was safely encoded onto Beta and VHS and minidisk but was for all intents and purposes as remote as their objects held in foreign museums. The lesson here is that the respective value horizons of the local community and the outside organization need to meet in a meaningful way.
Recently, Barngarla reclamation made it onto Facebook. Photographs and language materials were uploaded to the Facebook group ‘Barngarla Peoples of South Australia’:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/115798078441945/.
There are approximately 60 registered members of this open group. The median age among Aboriginal people across the study sites range from 20 (Port Lincoln) to 24 (Port Augusta). We are certainly dealing with people more likely to engage with new technologies and new social media. We plan to develop a mobile phone dictionary application and to tap in to GPS-backed tourists who wish to experience Barngarla language and culture while travelling through, e.g. listening to Welcome to Country in Barngarla upon arrival to Barngarla country.
There are a number of other platforms that we are currently considering, such as NING: a popular platform that Monaghan trialled with Vanuatu Cultural Centre in 2008. Features include social integration, so that users can login using their Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google accounts; blogs; forums; video and audio upload, and photo galleries. The major advantage is that it is an inexpensive and flexible option.
Communities of practice
Linguists, like other office workers, often have a handy basket on their desks next to the in/out tray called the ‘too hard basket’ or it may rather more euphemistically be called ‘community issues’. It is for difficult matters that are best left for the ‘community’ to resolve. This is probably for some at least a matter of convenience. But for others there is an element of dread at the looming boundaries of (often descriptive-focused) linguistic knowledge and competencies, where angels fear to tread. Of course, this is slightly tongue in cheek – for the problem is far worse and particularly widespread in government bureaucracies. In the context of this paper, it is important to draw a distinction between such an imagined community and to focus on the community of engagement that can be created in a virtual environment and, where possible, through face-to-face interactions as well.
According to Wenger (1998: 73), a community of practice has three main elements: (i) mutual engagement, (ii) joint enterprise, and (iii) shared repertoire.
Figure 4: Dimensions of practice as the property of a community (Wenger 1998: 73)
Wenger’s influential insight is that communities are made by doing – through practice. In the case of the Barngarla reclamation project a community of practice will be created through mutual engagement in the joint reclamation enterprise. During these processes a shared repertoire will develop. The repertoire includes: concepts, stories, artifacts, discourses (as listed in Figure 4). Of great significance for a virtual community is the fact that this experiential repertoire will potentially operate according to different norms to those operating in face-to-face contexts. An illustration by analogy here is the difference between the styles of emails and handwritten letters (if such things still exist) or face-to-face interactions. A rapidly growing body of literature is examining the evolving etiquette of social media mediated interactions.
While mutual engagement can readily provide benefits through mutual recognition among participants as fellow participants – it is around these recognitive relationships that community coheres – there is a potential cost in the challenge these flows and exchanges pose to existing power and authority structures within the local Aboriginal knowledge economy.
The famous Ara Irititja project, a digital archive that services communities in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara-Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia, has not only developed a platform for digital interaction but also a set of cultural protocols. This is in some ways a closed system and as such it is easier to manage information access and flows. The new media, by its very nature, provides far more opportunities for interaction and digital exchange (Christidis et. al. 2008). It is possible of course to set up a closed site, but arguably the full functionality of a wiki almost requires that it remains open, although closely moderated. Questions arise here about who gets to administer the site, its membership and its content. Key to answering this question is the nature of traditional and post-traditional knowledge economies. Michaels wrote that ‘the Aboriginal societies I encounter in Australia provide no models for progressive global villages. To the contrary, a future modeled on their information management systems would more closely resemble a vast gerontocratic bureaucracy than a hippie commune writ large’. Michael’s prickly comments here are directed at Marshall McLuhan’s (1962) utopian vision of the global village.
In closing, Michaels notes that it took 2000 years for the Christian Bible, through the technology of the printing press, to reach all corners of the globe. Television achieved the same feat in less that a generation. Facebook and other new media platforms are on track to achieve it in a fraction of that time. The big question is how tough, yet fragile, societies can cope with the challenges to their local knowledge and authority systems. Rather than a utopian global village, we need to focus on reclaiming and reviving languages and prevent the recently de-subjugated knowledges (Foucault) that they support from becoming re-subjugated.
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