Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ideologies of Rescue and Material Practice in Institutional Endeavors of Language Preservation and Revitalization.

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University of Michigan doctoral student Joshua Friedman, with the guidance of Dr. Andrew Shryock, will undertake research on the relationship between the ideologies and the material practices of institutional endeavors of language and text preservation. The researcher will explore how engagements with texts may change as they are collected from previous places of use, and rematerialized according to institutional dynamics of preservation. In what ways do these processes influence the transmission and reproduction of language? How might they shape, and how are they shaped by, ideologies of what language preserves?The research will be carried out in the United States using Yiddish text and language preservation as a case example. The researcher will focus on the relationship between ideologies, discourses, and narratives of "saving" the Yiddish language, and the material practices by which Yiddish texts are preserved by different American Jewish institutions. The researcher will employ an ethnographic approach including methodologies of long-term participant observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and archival research. This project will analyze (1) the material changes Yiddish language artifacts undergo as they are preserved, and the effect of these changes on their discursive, symbolic and social significance, (2) how practices of language preservation shape, and are shaped by, the social value given to textual objects and their materiality (3) the relationship of Yiddish language preservation to the broader preservation work by Jewish communities and institutions. It has been estimated that the world today is losing languages at the rate of one every two weeks. This systematic case study will help shed light on how alternative discourses and practices of saving -- as preservation, as rescue, as salvation -- affect language preservation. Thus research findings will inform language researchers and policy makers working to address the contemporary challenges and dynamics of preventing language loss. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.