Theory and practice of language documentation, description, and support

I do research on the principles and practices of language documentation, language description, and language support (including revitalisation, maintenance, and policy development). This includes the following topics.

1. Research methods and history

  • Nathan, David & Peter K. Austin. 2004. Reconceiving metadata: language documentation through thick and thin. Language Documentation and Description 2, 179-187. London: SOAS. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2006. Data and language documentation. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation, 87-112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. download
  • Austin, Peter K. & Lenore A. Grenoble. 2007. Current trends in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 4, 12-25. link
  • Dobrin, Lise, Peter K. Austin & David Nathan. 2007. Dying to be counted: commodification of endangered languages. In Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond and David Nathan (eds.) Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory, 59-68. London: SOAS. download
  • Austin, Peter K. 2008. Training for language documentation: Experiences at the School of Oriental and African Studies. In Margaret Florey & Victoria Rau (eds.) Documenting and Revitalising Austronesian Languages, 25-41. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication No. 1. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. link
  • Dobrin, Lise, Peter K. Austin & David Nathan. 2009. Dying to be counted: the commodification of endangered languages in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 6, 37-52. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2010. Current issues in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 7, 12-33. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2010. Applying for a language documentation research grant. Language Documentation and Description 7, 285-299. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2012. Language documentation. Oxford Bibliographies online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Austin, Peter K. 2013. Language documentation and meta-documentation. In Mari Jones & Sarah Ogilvie (eds.) Keeping Languages Alive: Documentation, Pedagogy and Revitalization, 3-15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. download
  • Austin, Peter K. 2014. Language documentation in the 21st century. JournaLIPP 3, 57-71. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2016. Language documentation 20 years on. In Martin Pütz & Luna Filipović (eds.) Endangered Languages and Languages in Danger: Issues of ecology, policy and human rights, 147-170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. download
  • Austin, Peter K. 2017. Language documentation and legacy text materials. Asian and African Languages and Linguistics 11, 23-44. link
  • Austin, Peter K. & Stefanie Pillai. 2020. Language description, documentation and revitalisation of languages in Malaysia. Journal of Modern Languages 30(1), 1-5. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2021. Corpora and archiving in language documentation, description, and revitalisation. Ethnorema 17, 53-65. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2022. Making 2,180 pages more useful: the Diyari dictionary of Rev. J. G. Reuther. To appear in Eda Dehermi & Christopher Moseley (eds.) Endangered Languages in the 21st Century . London: Routledge. link

2. Research ethics and language ideologies

  • Austin, Peter K. 2010. Communities, ethics and rights in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 7, 34-54. link
  • Peter K. 2014. And still they speak Diyari: the life history of an endangered language. Ethnorema 10, 1-17. link
  • Austin, Peter K. 2014. Going, going, gone? The ideology and politics of language revitalisation in eastern Australia. In Peter K. Austin & Julia Sallabank (eds.) Endangered Languages. Beliefs and Ideologies in Language Documentation and Revitalisation. London: British Academy. download
  • Austin, Peter K. 2019. Comunidades, ética y derechos en lingüística de la documentación. In Lucía Golluscio, Paola Pacor, Florencia Ciccone, Marta Krasan (eds.) Lingüística de la Documentación: textos fundacionales y proyecciones en América del Sur, 169-192. Spanish translation of Austin 2010. Buenos Aires : Eudeba & Universidad de Buenos Aires. download

3. Creating research outputs

  • Austin, Peter K. & Julia Sallabank. 2018. Language documentation and language revitalisation: some methodological considerations. In Leanne Hinton, Leena Huss & Gerald Roche (eds.) Handbook of Language Revitalisation, 207-215. London: Routledge. download
  • Austin, Peter K. 2020. Language documentation and revitalisation. In Justyna Olko & Julia Sallabank (eds.) Revitalizing endangered languages: a practical guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. download
  • Sallabank, Julia and Peter K. Austin. 2022. Endangered Languages. To appear in Li Wei, Zhu Hua and James Simpson (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 2nd edition. link