Seeing off endangered languages and selecting a langauge in deathbed

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K18486
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Literature, Linguistics, and related fields
• Research Institution: Kobe City College of Nursing
• Principal Investigator: Fujishiro Setsu 神戸市看護大学, 看護学部, 教授 (30249940)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 山内 理惠 神戸市看護大学, 看護学部, 教授 (00368507)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 危機言語 / 看取り / 二言語併用 / 悲嘆 / イギリス文学 / シベリア / D.H.ロレンス / 母語

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study analyzes two kinds of mitori or "seeing off the extinction of lives": seeing off an endangered language and nursing a person on deathbed. When a language becomes extinct, what process does it go through? When a person is under a severe condition physically, how do they or the people around them respond and in which language, if in multilingual area? By observing these processes concretely from different angles, we found some similarities in both cases. On the one hand, when an endangered language eventually dies, the process accelerates at their last stage. On the other hand, a person on deathbed or around them sometimes tries to express grief or pain with words to encourage them to live. This is similar to speakers of an endangered language trying to keep the language alive. It has not yet been clear the relation of two kind of mitori for an endangered language as well as for a person. However, there may be common features in the ecological aspects of the process.

Free Research Field

言語学（シベリアの諸言語研究、特にチュルク系諸言語研究）

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

メディアの発達やインターネットの発達により、世界の言語使用状況はますます話者数の多い言語に収斂しつつある。そのような状況下で消滅の危機に瀕した言語は文字通り瀕死の状態にあり、今やこれら言語を看取る段階にある。このような言語の看取りのプロセスは、人間が瀕死の状態にある時の看取りといくつかの面でつながりがある。この研究では、人間の死と言語の死に通底する高速で進む消滅への最終段階で生じる延命や復興のプロセスを直視しながら、一方で言語の死と人間の死に際して生じる言語行動の多様性を浮き彫りにした。