School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Language data assessment at the national level: learning from the State of the Environment process in Australia
    McConvell, P ; Thieberger, N (Foundation for Endangered Languages, 2003)
    Language maintenance is necessarily grounded in communities and has a local focus. Federal government policy has a national and international focus, yet it is the source of funding for most Australian indigenous language (IL) work, through ATSIC. The nearest approach to a national assessment of the number of languages and their needs has come through a perhaps unexpected source, an initiative of the federal department responsible for the environment, Environment Australia. Every five years this department mounts an evaluation of aspects of the physical and cultural environment, called the 'State of the Environment'. In 1997 it proposed a set of indicators for assessing the state of indigenous languages and in 2001 these indicators were implemented in the State of Indigenous Languages (SOIL) report. Among the indicators are those which measure the level of endangerment of languages. This necessitated building an improved listing of languages and consideration of how census data can be used to extract endangerment measures. Especially given the minimal questions on language in the Australian census and issues surrounding the meaning of the responses, these measures benefit from cross-checking against local studies where they exist. This paper presents some of the most recently available census data from 2001 and compares it, where possible, with local and regional studies.