Leanne Hinton

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Leanne Hinton speaking at an Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival conference, 2008 Leanne hinton.jpg
Leanne Hinton speaking at an Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival conference, 2008

Leanne Hinton (born 28 September 1941) is an American linguist and emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Contents

Education and career

Hinton received her PhD in 1977 from UC San Diego, with a dissertation entitled "Havasupai songs: a linguistic perspective," written under the supervision of Margaret Langdon. [1] After joining the Berkeley faculty in 1978, Hinton began working with California languages. [2]

Hinton specializes in American Indian languages, sociolinguistics, and language revitalization. [3] She has been described as "an authority on how and why languages are being lost, the significance of language diversity, and the ways in which indigenous tongues can be revitalized before it's too late." [4] "She first worked with Native American groups on bilingual education, orthographic design and literature development.

Hinton is a director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (SCOIL), and also participates in language revitalization efforts and organizations, including the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and its biennial Breath of Life conferences, for which she is a consulting board member. [5] [6] [7] [8] In collaboration with Andrew Garrett, Hinton has also directed a project to digitize many of the SCOIL records, which are now available through the California Language Archive. [9] Hinton was involved in the creation of the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program while working with indigenous language speakers in California. [10]

Awards and achievements

In 2006, Leanne Hinton was awarded a Cultural Freedom Award, which honours individuals who support communities in upholding diversity, cultural freedom and creativity, from the Lannan Foundation. [11]

In 2012, she was awarded the Language, Linguistics, and the Public award from the Linguistic Society of America. [12]

Published works

Related Research Articles

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In Breath of Life workshops, linguists help members of Native American communities access and use archival material documenting their ancestral languages in the interest of language restoration and revitalization. This is particularly important for the many communities that no longer have fluent speakers of their languages. They are held biannually in June at U.C. Berkeley and at the University of Oklahoma in Norman in even-numbered years, and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC in odd-numbered years. The project was initiated in the early 1990s at the University of California Berkeley, in part by linguist Leanne Hinton.

Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI) - an intensive annual "summer school for Indigenous language activists, speakers, linguists, and teachers" - hosted at the University of Alberta, Edmonton - is a "multicultural, cross-linguistic, interdisciplinary, inter-regional, inter-generational" initiative. CILLDI was established in 1999 with one Cree language course offered by Cree speaker Donna Paskemin. By 2016 over 600 CILLDI students representing nearly 30 Canadian Indigenous languages had participated in the program and it had become the "most national of similar language revitalization programs in Canada aimed at the promotion of First Peoples languages." CILLDI - a joint venture between the University of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan - responds to "different sociolinguistic situations in language communities under threat" and includes three faculties at the University of Alberta in Edmonton - Arts, Education, and Native Studies. CILLDI provides practical training to students which is "directly implemented back in the community." Initiatives like CILLDI were formed against the backdrop of a projection of a catastrophic and rapid decline of languages in the twenty-first century.

References

  1. Bright, William (1982). Bibliography of the Languages of Native California: Including Closely Related Languages of Adjacent Areas. Scarecrow Press. ISBN   978-0-8108-1547-6.
  2. "Leanne Hinton, LSA 213, Language Revitalization". 2009 Linguistic Institute, Linguistic Structure and Language Ecologies. Retrieved 2013-04-19.
  3. "Profile : Leanne Hinton - Linguistics Department, UC Berkeley" . Retrieved 2009-11-05.
  4. "Native Tongues Untied". KPFA Pacifica Radio. 2009-10-12. Retrieved 2013-04-19.{{cite episode}}: Missing or empty |series= (help)
  5. "Board of Directors." Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. (retrieved 16 Dec 2009)
  6. "06.06.2008 - Breath of Life for California's native languages" . Retrieved 2009-11-05.
  7. "American Indian tribes turn to technology in race to save endangered languages". Washington Post. 2013-04-17. Retrieved 2013-04-19.[ dead link ]
  8. "Botkin Lecture Flyer for Leanne Hinton, 2011". The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Retrieved 2013-04-19.
  9. Johnston, Jesse (26 June 2013). "Voices for the Future". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  10. "Survival of Endangered Languages: The California Master-Apprentice Program". International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 123 (1). 1997-01-01. doi:10.1515/ijsl.1997.123.177. ISSN   1613-3668.
  11. "Lannan Foundation". Lannan Foundation. Retrieved 2017-11-03.
  12. "LSA Awards Citations | Linguistic Society of America". www.linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 2017-11-03.