Community Linguist Certificate

CLC holders might:

• lead community-based language projects
• produce dictionaries and grammars
• develop new vocabulary items
• oversee place-naming projects
• hold orthography and literacy workshops
• transcribe and archive personal stories and community histories
• build language databases and websites
• write grant proposals for community-based language projects.

Who are CLC students?

Certificate students will likely have no prior exposure to linguistics. They may be speakers or semi-speakers of their Indigenous language, and they will have an abiding interest in preventing the loss of their language. Possibly, they have taken on the task of saving the language in their home community but need more expertise, material, and authority to make substantive changes. Students might hold a B.A. or B.Ed and simply be seeking specialized knowledge in Indigenous language documentation. CLC students might also be Elders or other fluent speakers, community language activists who wish to develop linguistic analysis skills so they can document their languages traditions or written literature.

Which courses make up the CLC?

There are six courses that Community Linguist Certificate students must take to prepare them for community-based language documentation. Students usually take two courses per summer in the order listed: