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Exploring Language and Human Flourishing

Stephen Watters and Johannes Merz

This volume contains the proceedings of the Pike Center Symposium on "Language and Human Flourishing," May 17-20, 2021. The authors present working papers that address the connection between the well-being of an ethnolinguistic community and its language ecology.

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About

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About the Book

Human flourishing is a frequent topic in the popular and academic literature, along with the annual surveys and reports that rank the happiest nations on earth. The king of Bhutan famously described the goal for his country as pursuing Gross National Happiness (over and above Gross National Product). Many disciplines have their own matrices by which to study human flourishing each with their own foci: health, feelings of happiness, brain activity when we're happy, economic prosperity, an absence of corruption, meaning and purpose, a clean environment, and religious involvement to name but a few.

Less commonly, and even infrequently, do studies make a connection between language and human flourishing. On the one hand, the relationship is so obvious as to make any point of connection meaningless. Of course, the languages in one's repertoire will have affect on certain aspects of human flourishing. On the other hand, those of us who spend time studying the local languages of the world and the communities that speak them intuit that there is some kind of causal relationship that is worth paying attention to. Ethnolinguistic vitality would seem to correlate, at least on casual observation, with overall community health and vitality. The goal of "Exploring Language and Human Flourishing," then, is to spawn research and understanding of the relationship between the overall well-being of an ethnolinguistic community and its language ecology.

This volume is a small start in that effort. It is a compilation of the papers presented at the online Pike Center Working Symposium on "Language and Human Flourishing," May 17-20, 2021. It is a new endeavor to make a connection between language and human flourishing for each of the authors here. The contributions are "working papers," and as such need further work and refinement through the process of peer review. It is hoped that at some point in the near future, we will be joined by a larger multidisciplinary group in a Pike Center Public Symposium. In the long run, we will consider the volume to have had some measure of success if it spawns a systematic reflection and study of the associated questions and assumptions inherent in the connection between language and human flourishing.

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Author

About the Authors

Stephen Watters

Johannes Merz

Contents

Table of Contents

Contributors

1Introduction

  1. 1.1Part one: Definitions
  2. 1.2Part two: Case studies
  3. 1.3Afterword
  4. 1.4References

2A Framework for Research on the Relationship between Language and Human Flourishing2

  1. 2.1Introduction
  2. 2.2Some brief depictions of human flourishing
  3. 2.3Linguistic flourishing
  4. 2.4Linguistic poverty
  5. 2.5Empirical research on flourishing
  6. 2.6Human flourishing: a paradigm for engaging with endangered language communities?
  7. 2.7References

3Longing to See People Flourish: Toward an Inclusive Anthropological Approach to Human Flourishing

  1. 3.1Introduction
  2. 3.2Etic perspectives of human flourishing
  3. 3.3Etic and emic coevalness
  4. 3.4Toward an inclusive anthropology of human flourishing
  5. 3.5Studying the diversity of human flourishing
  6. 3.6Longing to see people flourish
  7. 3.7Conclusion
  8. 3.8References

4Language and Human Flourishing: From Linguistic Poverty to Linguistic Freedom

  1. 4.1Introduction
  2. 4.2Flourishing in theological, missiological, and organizational perspective
  3. 4.3Linguistic poverty defined broadly
  4. 4.4Linguistic freedom: The beginnings of a definition
  5. 4.5Conclusions
  6. 4.6References

5Linguistic Injustice as a Disruption to Human Flourishing: A Missiological Exploration16

  1. 5.1Introduction
  2. 5.2Justice issues in language
  3. 5.3Missiological implications
  4. 5.4Conclusion
  5. 5.5References
  6. 5.6Appendix A: Terminology
  7. 5.7Appendix B: Notes on the “global language system”
  8. 5.8Appendix C: What is linguistic justice?

6Linguistic Hospitality as an Element of Human Flourishing

  1. 6.1Introduction
  2. 6.2Linguistic hospitality and human flourishing
  3. 6.3Linguistic hospitality and agency
  4. 6.4Linguistic hospitality and justice
  5. 6.5Linguistic hospitality and joy
  6. 6.6Practical expressions of linguistic hospitality
  7. 6.7Summary and concluding remarks
  8. 6.8References

7Linguistic Flourishing and Poverty in Diaspora Community: A Case Study about Korean-Americans

  1. 7.1Introduction
  2. 7.2Issues of insufficient linguistic agency
  3. 7.3Strategies to enable linguistic flourishing
  4. 7.4Conclusion
  5. 7.5References

8Spinning the Top: Translanguaging Pedagogy for Human Flourishing of Linguistic Minority Students

  1. 8.1Introduction
  2. 8.2Creation, fall, the cross, and human flourishing
  3. 8.3Linguistic repertoire, education, and human flourishing
  4. 8.4Translanguaging
  5. 8.5The Translanguaging Top Model
  6. 8.6TL Top Model and linguistic flourishing
  7. 8.7The TL Top Model and reconciliation with God
  8. 8.8Conclusion
  9. 8.9References

9Human Flourishing in Relation to Vernacular Bible Translation and Scripture Engagement

  1. 9.1Introduction
  2. 9.2What Is Human Flourishing?
  3. 9.3How Does Human Flourishing Relate to Biblical Flourishing?
  4. 9.4How Does Language Use Contribute to Human Flourishing?
  5. 9.5How Does Vernacular Language Translation Contribute to Human Flourishing?
  6. 9.6How Does Scripture Engagement Contribute to Human Flourishing?
  7. 9.7How Do We Measure Human Flourishing in Relation to Bible Translation and Scripture Engagement?
  8. 9.8A Case Study: The Una People of Papua, Indonesia
  9. 9.9Conclusions
  10. 9.10References83
  11. 9.11Appendix A: Psalm 1
  12. 9.12Appendix B: Psalm 92

10Human Flourishing and Language and Identity Shift

  1. 10.1Language revitalization as health promotion
  2. 10.2Where language shift might not be disruptive
  3. 10.3Conclusion
  4. 10.4References

11Afterword: Moving Forward on Exploring Language and Human Flourishing

  1. 11.1References

About the Publisher

About the Publisher

This book is published on Leanpub by Pike Center

Pike Center for Integrative Scholarship is an initiative of SIL International that builds capacity for language development through scholarship. SIL works alongside ethnolinguistic communities as they discover how language development addresses the challenging areas of their daily lives—social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual.

One of Pike Center’s strategies for building capacity is to grow the needed bodies of knowledge through its Agile Publishing program. We are using this lean publishing platform to give our affiliated scholars a platform for developing and refining new contributions to growing bodies of knowledge that support the language development movement. Many of our titles are still in a preliminary stage of development. Others are finished but have such a narrow audience that we have not elected to turn them into print books. Still others have reached the maturity of becoming a print book; in such cases, this is indicated by a link on the landing page for the book.

All of the revenues generated through sales on this site are directed to the Pike Center to support the on-going research activities of its affiliated scholars. Naming a higher price when you purchase one of our books is a way of contributing to this cause. Or you may go to the Pike Center website to make a donation that will receive a tax-deductible receipt.

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