A community approach to language documentation in Africa

Although still not common, some recent language documentation projects in Africa
have adopted the community-based approach (Good 2012, Bischoff & Jany 2018)
which allows for the participation of community members at various stages of
the documentation process. This approach is highly favored over the traditional
method of linguistic inquiry that was based on the speech of one or a few
 individuals, i.e. the “ancestral code” (Woodbury 2011). However, it appears that even
within this current framework, the linguist reaps the greatest academic and
financial benefits while community members end up with linguistic outputs that do not
meet their current livelihood needs. I argue in this paper that instead of focusing on
the documentation of African languages while neglecting current survival needs of
community members, and thereby legitimizing and accompanying language death,
linguists and funding agencies should conceive linguistic projects as community
development projects. If linguistic projects assist in community development and
maintenance, languages and cultures are more likely to be preserved, making
linguistic work meaningful and useful to African communities.