Global Language Justice and the Digital Sphere

This seminar course takes concerns around rapidly diminishing language diversity as the starting point for an interdisciplinary, trans-regional, and trans-lingual investigation of the role of digital communication technologies in these global shifts.  Digital technologies appear to be contributing to language extinction, with a potential for 50-90% loss of language diversity this century.  While an increasing number of languages are digitally supported, this process is largely market-driven, excluding smaller or poorer language communities.  This course investigates the role of digital design and governance in including or excluding languages from the digital sphere. Digital exclusion and language shift affect minority language communities in ways that cut to the core of their identities, relationships, and epistemologies.  Furthermore, it is estimated that there are 800+ endangered languages represented in the NY area, a higher concentration than any other city in the world.  As such, this course gives students the opportunity to understand global language justice through the work of leading scholars and practitioners (guest speakers to be announced at beginning of semester), as well to understand it on a personal and practical level through hands-on activities such as interviews with minority language speakers and assessments of digital supports for minority languages.  Students will leave this course with new skills in qualitative and quantitative research methods, media production skills, and a rich understanding of how the social sciences, humanities, and big data contribute an interdisciplinary and multi-faceted perspective on the loss of language diversity.  Furthermore, students will be challenged to identify and develop evidence-based strategies to advance global language justice in the digital sphere.