Strategies of Communication in the Uplands of Vietnam and Laos

About

In this online event, two researchers will share their work on ethnic minority communities of upland Laos and Vietnam, highlighting their linguistic diversity, which researchers can explore in the Asian Division’s Lesser Known Languages Collection, a unique set of materials of about 200 languages. The session will focus on how orality and literacy play roles in shaping how upland communities communicate, form social relationships and recount their pasts.

Dr. Nathan Badenoch will speak about Northern Laos, where widespread norms of multilingualism mean that language use is dynamic. People use multiple languages depending upon the social setting in this region where the spoken word and oral culture form a common social foundation. Although there is increasing pressure from the national language, local patterns of multilingualism emphasize the importance of smaller languages in the resilience of upland society.

Dr. Hồ Thành Tâm, who conducted research using the Library’s Southeast Asian Lesser Known Language Collection, will speak about practices of literacy in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in the context of expanding missionary activity and colonial governance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was within this context that the first Latin-based writing systems for upland communities were developed with the support of French Catholic missionaries, and later further expanded by Protestant missionaries. The introduction of these scripts did more than…

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Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

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