Wow! Light Warlpiri has hit the news big time. Carmel O’Shannessy just published a paper in Language on it. And it’s been taken up as news: The Atlantic, and you can see it and other renditions in Google News. And the Atlantic makes use of the material on Carmel O’Shannessy’s research page. OK – they don’t focus on the fascinating auxiliary, and maybe it isn’t the world’s newest language, (though it must be a contender).. but isn’t it a wonderful thing that more people are realising how interesting this work is!
Follow3 thoughts on “Light Warlpiri hits the news!”
Comments are closed.
Great to see some excellent homegrown research get media attention! Apparently it hit the headlines via a press release from the LSA (Linguistics Society of America) – see this blogpost: http://glossographia.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/light-warlpiri-not-a-new-mixed-language/ . The blogger points out that Carmel published on Light Warlpiri in the Australian Journal of Linguistics back in 2005 and so quite rightly he ponders why it’s newsworthy material only now, eight years later.
This raises an issue I’ve wondered about for a few years in relation to our own national professional body, the ALS (Australian Linguistic Society). It seems a pity that Carmel’s groundbreaking research is belatedly making the news courtesy of the LSA, not the ALS. If the ALS increased its capacity for publicity and advocacy (which at the moment appears negligible), Carmel’s work may have hit the headlines when it was truly new research and linguistics in Australia would have been made to look good because of it. It seems like a real missed opportunity that the ALS does very little in the way of advocacy or promotion of our field, especially when you see other national professional bodies engaging well with media, PR and policy (e.g. ACOSS, ATESOL and the AMA). The ALS has so much going for it – a great history, a leading journal and terrific annual conferences and Australian linguistics punches above its weight globally. I would love it if our national body could do more propel our fantastic work and informed views into the public sphere. After all, the ALS’s first stated objective is “to further interest in, and support for, linguistic research and teaching in Australia”. How about engaging someone in a designated communications/PR role – even just part-time. Surely it can be done, and then the next bit of groundbreaking research won’t lay unnecessarily dormant like Carmel’s appears to have done.
Yes, we need targeted media releases. It’s clear people are becoming more interested in language-related matters – the Economist has had a number of interesting articles on languages. SO we need to help people satisfy their curiosity and perhaps extend it.
And now Language Log has started to list the places where Carmel’s work has been discussed. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ Good eh?