Fight poverty with linguistics

Poverty! Social Justice! These and other social issues are on the hearts of many people these days. People are responding and reaching out to the poor and the oppressed with messages of hope in many practical ways. At Canada Institute of Linguistics, we believe that a practical way to serve and help alleviate poverty is through linguistics training. Linguistics, when applied, can assist minority communities around the world to use their languages to meet life’s challenges.

Why linguistics?

The roots of poverty are deep, and when faced with huge issues such as corruption, conflict, hunger and disease, what can be done? Many minority communities around the world find language issues to be at the heart of the poverty and discrimination they face. The mother-tongue is an integral part of their identity as a community, but may have little influence in alleviating poverty, securing just treatment and improving quality of life. The answer: language development.

Language development is the series of ongoing planned actions that a language community takes to ensure that its language continues to serve its changing social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual needs and goals. CanIL is an affiliate of SIL International and CanIL faculty represent a wide range of field experience with SIL. SIL's expertise related to language development includes training and consulting for activities such as linguistic analysis, orthography and writing systems development, literature development and multilingual education and literacy.

Get training from CanIL: With training in linguistics from field-experienced faculty, you can assist minority language communities in the development of their languages. In partnership with governments, churches and NGOs, community-based language development projects can make a huge difference. Previously illiterate communities can have an alphabet, books of their own and sustainable literacy. Villages where no school existed before can have schools for their children, where multilingual education can lead to deep and pervasive change. Health organizations can develop materials that will help arrest the advance of AIDS and other diseases. Churches can begin using Scriptures that have been translated into the mother tongue, the heart language of people.

For almost 80 years, organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators (Canada, US, global) and SIL International have sent linguists out to facilitate language development in minority communities around the world. CanIL exists to train the next generation of linguists. Will you be one of them?