Review
Language, Land, and Body: An Indissoluble Nexus
Canadian literature, Vol.256, pp.183-187
2024
Metrics
1 Record Views
Abstract
2022 marks the beginning of the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, proposed two years earlier in the “Los Pinos Declaration” as a means to highlight “the urgent need to preserve, revitalize and promote indigenous languages” (“Los Pinos” 2). The Declaration acknowledges the fundamental role of Indigenous languages in fostering social cohesion, cultural identity, community health, and biodiversity conservation. Indeed, the preservation of linguistic heterogeneity is an urgent issue globally. Research suggests that forty per cent of the approximately seven thousand languages in use around the world are threatened in some way. Within four decades, “language loss could triple,” marked tragically by the disappearance of “at least one language” . . . per month” and ”over 1,500 by the end of the century end” (Bromham et al. 163).
In the Canadian context, Dadibaajim by Helen Olsen Agger and Tongues, edited by Eufemia Fantetti, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari, present cogent interventions. Although differing in composition—the former, a research monograph, the latter, an anthology of personal essays—both texts are comparably multilingual and polyvocal in their attention to the indissoluble nexus of language, land, and body. Whereas Dadibaajim comprises nine chapters and a conclusion, Tongues features twenty-six essays and an editors’ introduction by a diverse cohort of contributors. Notwithstanding their mutual emphasis on Canadian languages, lands, and communities, both respond to the increasing pervasiveness of linguistic homogenization and, more specifically, the dominance of English in postcolonial societies. The distinctive parallelism of their subtitles—“through narrative” and “through language”—intimates the crucial role of storytelling in mediating processes of returning and belonging.
Details
- Title
- Language, Land, and Body: An Indissoluble Nexus
- Creators
- John Charles Ryan - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- Canadian literature, Vol.256, pp.183-187
- Publisher
- University of British Columbia; VANCOUVER BC
- Number of pages
- 5
- Identifiers
- 991013328526102368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Review