Players and Power in Minority-group Settings

Who wins in sociolinguistic research undertaken in minority ethnolinguistic communities? This is a question that might at first glance seem an odd one. In fact, however, the concept of winning – with the concomitant themes of games and gamesmanship, plays and players, gains and losses, rewards and punishments, and so on – is an apposite one wherever academic research comes into contact with the ‘real world’. The particular fuel for the exercise here is inequality of knowledge, status and access. This paper will comment upon some of these issues in terms of, first, a contextualising framework within which research and, more particularly, majority–minority contact occurs and, second, some brief commentary on the practice and the power involved in that research. The outline, then, is as follows: (a) a cursory overview of the dynamics of language maintenance, shift and revival; (b) a sketch of a typology-in-progress that suggests the generalities that unite minority groups across a wide variety of contexts; (c) a specific consideration of some sociolinguistic and anthropological interactions with minority groups, as reported in the literature – of the tensions, matters of power and ethics; (d) a more general consideration of the duties and responsibilities of the researcher.