Poster: New Roles for Technology in Language Maintenance and Revitalization

According to Wikipedia, a centerpiece of Web 2.0 technologies, "Web 2.0 is a living term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web." These technologies are rapidly changing the way that people communicate and interact in their daily lives. If minority languages throughout the world are to continue to be a vital means of communication, rather than being replaced by a majority language, the adoption of new tools to allow interactive, electronic communication in these languages must be developed to meet current and future trends in electronic collaboration and communication. Prior to the development of Web 2.0, the Web was an expanding landscape of information that allowed the transfer of ideas from content producers to users. Users could view content, but were not able to easily produce their own or collaborate with like-minded individuals. This meant that the vast majority of content was produced by speakers of majority languages, especially English. However, with the growth of social networking, photo and video-sharing websites, wikis and other Web 2.0 applications, users are more able to easily communicate and interact with each other on a scale that has been heretofore unseen in our collective history. These new opportunities for interaction and idea sharing can provide truly unique forms of language-learning and communication in any language, but many challenges remain for minority language communities to make full use of these tools. This talk will focus on three main issues related to the development of Web 2.0 technologies for language revitalization and maintenance. First, it will examine the ways in which Web 2.0 is having an effect on daily communication and interaction worldwide in all communities, highlighting how these trends are likely to affect minority language communities in the coming years. Second, it will discuss some of the roadblocks to adapting technologies which were originally developed for English and other minority language, to new language situations, as well as some possible ways to address these problems. Third, it will provide concrete ideas for incorporating these technologies into a larger language maintenance/revitalization strategy in a way that allows even those without extensive technological resources or know-how to make use of them