SIL: We're on a mission from Dallas

A couple of linguistics bloggers have mentioned the panel on missionaries and linguistics which took place at the LSA 2007 meeting. Your host attended this discussion (except for the talk by Courtney Handman, which he skipped in order to go hear Claire Bowern's talk on Nyikina), and took some notes. While The Tensor already made the most comment one most hopes to hear in contexts like this -- no chairs were thrown in the making of this production -- SC wishes to discuss his view of what went on at the panel, as he found it mildly dispiriting for many of the usual reasons that underlie his general refusal to discuss religion or politics at work.

As many of the participants found it a matter of good faith in argumentation to briefly disclose their own views on the ontological question undergirding the discussion, your host will do likewise. Longtime readers know SC makes no secret of being a practicing Conservative Jew, although he has generally restricted my posts in that regard to issues of language, cultural practices, or the desperate longing for leavened bread that generally strikes SC shortly after he stops eating in preparation for the first night of Passover. Your host is under no illusions about the views of most visitors to this site, but it's not the purpose of what goes on here, and as long as nobody wants to throw punches over things unsaid, we're all happy. Readers who wish to inquire further along these lines are welcome to do so by e-mail, but proselytizing in the direction of either Jerry Falwell or Richard Dawkins will not be well-received.

Having said that, the questions raised by the panel are threefold:

• Does the missionary goal of organizations like SIL negatively impact the quality of the work they do as linguists?
• Does the missionary goal of organizations like SIL negatively impact the communities that they operate among?
• Given the divergence of goals between academic and missionary linguistics, should any sort of formal recognition be extended between the two communities?

The panelists responded to these in a variety of ways; what follows is based on my notes, which should not be treated as quotes in any case, and handouts where possible.

Lise Dobrin and Jeff Good, who organized the discussion, framed their talk as a series of questions not necessarily to be answered by them, but in need of discussion. They introduced several premises meant to be treated as the givens from which the discussion would start, but which SC found to be debatable notions in themselves:

• Missionary linguists impose Christian values on their hosts even while conducting only their linguistic business
• Academic linguists have recently discovered endangered language preservation as a moral cause (treating it as a human right)
• The goals of missionary and academic linguists diverge because academics treat languages as ends in themselves, while missionaries ultimately subordinate their language work to the goal of evangelization
• Different goals include different working priorities, such as SIL's shifting of spending on software from Shoebox development to font development, which isn't helpful to academic linguists

Starting from these premises, they ask some further questions:

• Is it desirable for academic linguists to be dependent on missionary-developed tools when their goals diverge?
• Is it desirable for SIL to have de facto control over things like the upcoming ISO standardization of language codes based on Ethnologue merely because nobody else has done the work, especially when there is disagreement over the empirical adequacy of SIL's categorizations?
• Should academic linguistics be reconfigured in the 21st century to eliminate these dependencies?

While Dobrin and Good would argue they were just raising the questions, SC is concerned that it is hard to suggest anathematizing people or organizations without provoking the suspicion that an affirmative answer is the intended result. They emphasized repeatedly that they were not questioning individual motives or work, but rather the existence of formal relations with an organization that ultimately has missionary goals.  The attempt not to cast individual aspersions is admirable, but as a number of commenters pointed out afterward, it was very hard to determine what practical effects were meant to be had by dissociating from SIL without treating the collection of SIL linguists any differently.

They were followed by William Svelmoe, a historian from Saint Mary's College, who did not address the questions of the panel from the standpoint of professional relevance, but rather came to provide some helpful historical context. William Townsend, the founder of SIL, originally trained as a preacher, but eventually wound up as a missionary to Guatemala. His work there convinced him of the need to learn about local languages in order to communicate effectively with the populations, and that it was important this be done well, because if the Bible was to be presented as the word of G-d, it would not be particularly credible if G-d was seen to have a hard time speaking the local language. This would be particularly unfair in light of the fact that the responsibility would actually lie with human translators; therefore, Townsend undertook to establish "Camp Wycliffe" to train missionaries.

Fortunately for Townsend, Ken Pike shared his religious convictions and had the drive to be a great linguist, and thus set out to help him by establishing a school for translation, based in Texas. Townsend was thus free to concentrate on training the budding linguistic missionaries in their missionary skills specifically, which he did through a school based in Mexico. They clashed frequently over the need to emphasize getting good linguistics done versus good missionary work, but ultimately settled on a formula whereby the linguists would worry about linguistics, and would go into the field as members of SIL, whereas the job of translating the Bible would be carried out under the rubric of Wycliffe Bible Translators. Since all SIL members are Wycliffe members, this can be seen as something of an accounting fiction, but the take-home point is that the linguists are in no way supposed to proselytize as part of their work. SIL has since signed contracts with a number of governments to do language preservation work, contracts which specifically preclude their proselytizing (although not their contribution to Bible translation); however, the degree to which any individual is capable of keeping these goals separate cannot be predicted merely from their assent to such contracts. After all, it takes a committed person to go live in a foreign, and generally quite poor and remote, country for 10-20 years at a time.

Prof. Svelmoe was followed by Courtney Handman, whose talk SC missed in favor of Claire Bowern's, and so the next speaker heard by your host was Patience Epps, a specialist in Amazonian languages. Prof. Epps was there to argue for a separation between the LSA and SIL, and spent a number of slides establishing that SIL members view their work as a means to the end of "making disciples of all the nations" (quoted from Matthew 28:19). One example of the alleged dishonesty of SIL is provided from this page of publications by the late Nathan Waltz. While it lists his scholarly works, it makes no mention of Old Testament summaries or hymnals that he has also worked on. We'll address the relevance of this point later.

Prof. Epps claims that because some SIL members have been demonstrated to engage in active proselytizing, that this demonstrates the inherently proselytizing nature of the organization -- specific examples being adduced in support of this claim. She then made a point SC wishes to highlight for later discussion as well (and this is a quote, taken from her handout):

Translation of a text from a different language and culture into the target language is not documentation of the target language and culture itself.

We then get to the heart of her argument, that SIL's work is allegedly incompatible with group rights to self-determination. In a citation of Nettle and Romaine somewhat reminiscent of Jack Hitt's writing on language death ([be nice -- ed.]), she quoted their statement that "Every language is a living museum, a monument to every culture it has been vehicle to". In case the Hittite nature of that remark is questioned, she then cites the same authors as saying "a way of life disappears with the death of a language". A number of slides are then spent on the argument that while cultures may change organically, the introduction of Christian beliefs is specifically damaging because individuals with money, power, and prestige come into these societies, and no matter how scrupulously they may behave, it is impossible for the locals not to make connections between the outsiders' culture and their wealth. This then leads to an abandonment of the prior culture for reasons other than internal change, which SC thinks it is fair to say Prof. Epps considers an illegitimate prospect. Prof. Epps noted that the wealth brought by the outsiders includes food and medicine, and that this is a welcome charitable contribution, but questioned why the charity couldn't come "with no spiritual strings attached" (again a quote from the handout).

Prof. Epps was followed by Ken Olson, arguing the case for SIL (he's an active member, as well as a professor at the University of North Dakota, but spoke in his personal capacity only, not as a spokesman for the organization). Prof. Olson briefly acknowledged the dual nature of the organization from its founding, but gave a "top ten reasons to consider SIL a scholarly organization" which really had just one that mattered -- the existence of over 13,000 scholarly publications in the SIL bibliography (which itself states that it has grown to 20,000 entries; it's not clear when Prof. Olson's figure dates from). That's a fair amount of language work to do in 70 years.

Prof. Olson addressed the same self-determination issue that Prof. Epps brought up, both reiterating that active proselytization is not sanctioned by the organization (although he did not address what SIL does to actually prevent such efforts by non-conforming fieldworkers), and bringing in a quote from Matthew Dryer, who commented (in a personal communication to Prof. Olson):

The question of whether SIL's religious activities have a negative impact on indigenous communities misses a fundamental point. What right do we as academics...have to decide what is best for indigenous communities? Isn't that for them to decide?

Missionaries do not force people to become Christians. They simply give them the choice...I have made the choice not to be a Christian. Why shouldn't people in indigenous communities also be allowed to decide whether or not to be Christians?

Prof. Olson also raised the fact that charges of "ethnocide" have been previously brought against SIL by professional anthropologists, and found lacking by the American Anthropological Association. Finally, he produced evidence from a number of case studies that SIL involvement has actually helped grow the number of speakers of some endangered languages, weakening the charge that their influence leads people to "go Western" and abandon their historic roots.

Finally, Daniel Everett, a former SIL member, gave a speech opposing the organization (his work has been discussed by Geoff Pullum, especially with regard to anti-SIL bias, here). Prof. Everett is of the opinion that SIL exists to fulfill prophecies in the book of Revelation, and that this warrants a cautious stance toward them, but lauded many of the activities the organization has carried out to date regarding language documentation and the development of useful software tools. Since SC's laptop battery had run out by Prof. Everett's talk, and there was no handout, he must be especially cautious in what he says here, so we'll restrict ourselves to one comment Prof. Everett made that did not have the effect he intended.

Discussing a tribe he had worked with, and describing them as "hyper-empirical", he recounted a conversation that he had with some of their members one day where they asked him to stop talking about Jesus. It seems that because he had not personally seen Jesus, the locals concluded that he had no evidence for his existence. Therefore, they would like him to cease discussion of the topic. From this, Prof. Everett concluded that the people SIL workers visit would prefer not to hear about Christianity, and that they should not be spreading things which said people do not wish to hear about. In SC's view, this illustrates Prof. Dryer's claim rather clearly -- Prof. Everett's community had heard the claims, weighed them, and found them wanting. It hardly was the case that they could not handle the introduction of other cultures' views into their community.

SC found this debate wearying, as noted above, because so much of it seemed to be post hoc justification of already-held positions. Nobody in the room was going to shift their views on religion on the basis of what was presented -- it seemed even less clear to your host that anyone would shift their views on SIL, either. If you came in with an innate dislike/distrust of Christianity, you were likely to side with Prof. Epps, and take her anecdotes as sufficiently damning of the organization. If you came in with positive or neutral views, you were likely to side with Prof. Olson, and take his smoothing over of the existence of instances of coercion by resorting to their high-level policies as sufficiently redemptive.

Having said that, and not speaking as a person with any history of fieldwork abroad, it was SC's own opinion that the anti-SIL view is much ado about very little. Returning to the questions that formed the basis of the discussion, the answers seemed to be:

• SIL's missionary goals do not appear to have systematically undermined the quality of the scholarship produced. Ethnologue may contain arguably wrong classifications, but it was not at all demonstrated that these stemmed in any predictable way from the specifically missionary goals that had sent the workers who produced it into the field.
• SIL's missionary goals do not appear to have negatively impacted the communities they serve in a systematic way. While evidence of specific cases of coercive behavior was produced, and merits intervention in those cases, it is not at all clear that this behavior is widespread, nor that any kind of large-scale "ethnocide" is ongoing.
• While the goals of missionary linguists extend beyond treating languages as ends in themselves and are thus not identical with those of academic linguists, it is neither clear from the above two answers that any kind of organizational malfeasance exists, nor that a specific formal tie between SIL and LSA exists to be severed.

The problem here is not only that the answers to the questions which inspired the panel are either favorable to SIL, highly ambiguous, or that the questions are too ill-formed to answer (i.e., nobody could agree on what relationship presently existed between LSA and SIL). It's that the posing of the questions itself seems to follow from a prejudgment against Christianity. SC will readily grant the veracity of every charge Prof. Epps leveled in its specifics -- this still leaves him believing that the organization as a whole is no threat to indigenous communities. An effort to show good faith on SIL's side might involve the public articulation of clearer policies for dealing with coercive proselytizing by actively rooting out offending individuals. This hardly requires renunciation of their beliefs, though.

More seriously, the insistence that  language documentation not result in the translation of any documents from English/Hebrew/Latin into endangered languages makes no sense unless it is grounded in specific animus against the documents in question. In machine translation, the gold standard for training statistical algorithms is to use parallel corpora, where the semantic content is identical and the structure of the documents at the level of both individual sentences and higher-level discourse can be cleanly mapped from one language to the other. People spend fantastic sums of money just to get parallel corpora of single pairs of languages, like the Canadian Hansards (the minutes of Parliament proceedings, in both English and French), or the 5 official languages used by the United Nations. SIL is an organization producing a parallel corpus spanning as many of the world's languages as possible. This is potentially an enormous gift to the field of machine translation (in fairness, SC is not aware of anyone using the data for this purpose at present, although it is not obvious why this should be the case). Irritation with the fact that the Christian Bible is the chosen document instead of a myriad of culturally-specific tales (which would be extraordinarily expensive to render in numerous other languages) is very hard to comprehend unless prior bias against Christianity is involved.

Returning to Prof. Epps' concern that Nathan Waltz had done religious work not mentioned in his c.v., it was not at all clear that his academic work qua academic work was in question. So the man wrote hymns. What if he had written erotic fan fiction centered around Mario, Luigi, and Princess Toadstool? Would that have impugned his academic work? It might not have been a credit to him personally, but surely the answer is "no". And if he had written such works and then proceeded to introduce them to the populations he worked with? Would that have been a lesser disservice to them than the sharing of religious ideas? More than a few concepts which might be foreign to the indigenous cultures would be passed along. If the transmission of any specifically Western knowledge or beliefs is an unacceptable incursion into the right of self-determination, all linguists, anthropologists and sociologists need to get out of the field right now and not return until they are sure that the abstract documentation of the local language and culture for the sake of disinterested knowledge is a value of the communities being studied as well as their own. Obviously this is not a serious proposal -- the point here is rather that secular scholars possess their own values, and it has not been demonstrated that those values are shared by the communities they visit any more than the missionaries' values are. So long as systematic coercion is not demonstrated, the relevance of non-scholarly activities by SIL workers is exactly as relevant as those of secular academics -- which is to say, not at all.

Last in the list of issues, the question of whether or not the academic community should cease its reliance on SIL-developed grammars and software struck SC as entirely ill-posed. If the work is lacking in scholarly utility, then yes, of course it should. But if that's not in question, then we return to the problem above -- namely, that the specifics of extra-academic work are irrelevant. Clearly, there are cases where this would not be true; the Nazis conducted gruesome experiments on their prisoners, and the question of relying on their medical work has been addressed by practitioners in that field . The reductio ad Hitlerum is grossly inappropriate here, though -- SIL linguists aren't murdering anyone. They're bringing food and medicine. It's hard for SC to understand why this taints their software while the unknown values of presumably secular developers should be assumed to be pure and beyond reproach.

One might read all this and conclude that your host merely had his own pro-SIL biases reaffirmed. While he nominally has no brief for specifically Christian belief, perhaps he merely sides with the SIL folks for fear that this was all just rehearsal for religious tests in reviewing linguistic work. Actually, SC is now curious to read some of Prof. Epps' citations -- it certainly sounds like specific wrongs have been committed, and this was something SC had not been aware of prior to attending the panel discussion. However, it certainly is the case that he came away from the discussion convinced that everyone involved might have benefited from reflection on a parable dear to the faith of the SIL founders. Jesus told those who would stone an adulterous woman not to do so unless they were free from sin; none could, and she lived. But this did not prevent him from then admonishing her: "Now go, and sin no more".

Comments

[cko]

This is a really heated debate. There is a lot to comment on here, but I would like to limit myself to just a few remarks since I share your view regarding the discussion of religion and politics at work.

I would be surprised if Epps made the argument that language documentation should not result in translation. Her quote, that you provide in this post, indicates that translation from one language (most likely, in this case, Spanish) into the target language does not constitute documentation. Language documentation should document how native speakers of a language talk to other native speakers of that language (N. Himmelmann (2006), in the first chapter of the book "Essentials in Language Documentation" calls this "observable linguistic behavior"). I think this is what Epps meant. Translation is not observable linguistic behavior, which means it is not linguistic documentation. If bible translators are claiming to conduct linguistic documentation, then it doesn't follow. BUT in order to provide a reasonable translation of the bible, it is assumed that the person translating the bible has conducted some amount of field work that does constitute linguistic documentation. (Oftentimes speakers of indigenous language don't speak the contact language that the linguist is trying to use.) Maybe this would be a better point to bring up.

I don't agree with your statement regarding what a goldmine it would be to use bible translations as parallel corpora in order to conduct semantic typology. I would look to work that is being (has been) conducted at the MPI for Psycholinguistics (or in association with that institution) for alternative methods. Here is their website: http://www.mpi.nl/

Finally, I would like to bring up an issue that Jane Hill discusses in her article in the recent Himmelmann (2006) book, namely, that documentary linguists need to be trained in ethnography. Essentially, having an understanding for the cultural practices of a linguistic community is important in understanding linguistic practices since they are closely related. The goal of a field linguist is to document these practices (both linguistic and cultural) and not to change them in a way that adheres to the linguist's cultural practices.

[eric "babe" morse]

Very interesting reading. Thanks for the in-depth analysis for those who were absent.

Oh, and, ah... have you got a link for those Luigi stories?

[Semantic Compositions]

It occurs to me in reading your post that in a couple of cases, we're talking at cross purposes, and I am grateful for the illumination of differences.

Regarding the first point, on whether or not Prof. Epps' statement about translation not constituting documentation: I will readily agree that under the definition of language documentation you provide -- "how native speakers of a language talk to other native speakers of that language" -- that the act of translation alone doesn't qualify. However, it did not strike me from the discussion that anyone was arguing that documentation of the languages under that definition wasn't going on; only that it was viewed as merely a necessary step in order to get to the Biblical translation. I should have made that explicit.

The second point re: whether or not the use of the translations as parallel corpora represents a "goldmine" for translation seems to me to be a point where we're coming from different perspectives. I wouldn't stand by the statement that it's useful from the standpoint of conducting typological research, because I didn't make it. As a computationalist, my interest in translation is more along the lines of what one gets from the IBM translation models (see Brown et al. 1993 from the references in this 2002 paper by Marcu and Wong, or just have a look at the second and sixth pages of the linked article to see an example). Alternatively, you might wish to browse the ODIN database presented at LSA 2007, which contains as few as one or two aligned sentences in the cases of some languages represented -- compared to that, a thousand pages of aligned text is very much a goldmine for the applications I have in mind. I wouldn't disagree with the point that having a large body of training data for statistical models renders the recorded linguistic knowledge implicitly rather than explicitly, but aligned corpora with statistical models represent the fastest route to developing a meaningful translation capability. From that perspective, the exact content of the data being aligned doesn't matter (although extending coverage beyond the semantic areas provided by the corpus still requires building a bigger, better lexicon).

As for the issue that you raise with the quote from Jane Hill, I don't think anyone would argue that improved ethnographic resources would be a bad thing. But at that point, you run up against the question of what any researcher, missionary or secular, ought to be doing given finite resources. If a purely academic researcher is only interested in documenting syntax for their typological work, and doesn't want to spend time on mythology or cooking, it's not clear to me that they should be compelled to be anthropologists as well. I don't wish to claim to quote Geoff Pullum directly, since I wasn't able to record him (and this occurred during the Q&A session, after my laptop battery was gone), but he made a statement along the lines of "the choice isn't between SIL's documentation or academic documentation, or SIL's software or academic software -- it's between SIL's products or none at all". Given that, Prof. Pullum's point was that arguments over whether or not the details of their linguistic research precisely matched the desires of other researchers misses the mark -- so long as they are producing documentation of the syntax/semantics/phonology which meets the standards of the academic community. If this is not seriously debated, and my impression as a nonspecialist in the endangered-languages field is that it is not, then demanding that they take on research responsibilities with their own limited resources which are outside the scope of their goals seems rather uncharitable.

Finally, you suggest that the goal of the SIL researchers is to "change [the cultural practices of the communities being researched] in a way that adheres to the linguist's cultural practices". Granting that specific SIL researchers have engaged in proselytizing practices which are definitely proscribed by the academic community, and that it is reasonable to question the vigor with which SIL polices this behavior even though it nominally violates their own policies, I didn't see a convincing rebuttal here to the point that everyone is bringing in cultural practices which may not be shared by the communities that they go visit. If a wholly secular linguist visits a community, learns about their religious practices, and then receives questions about their own views, is it least damaging to say, "Oh I don't believe in that", "I don't want to talk about it", or "I believe in your pantheon"? The last one might deflect discussion about foreign ideas, but sounds rather suspicious, while the former two might be different attitudes than those held by the locals. My point is that nobody comes in with absolutely no views or agenda which differ from the communities they research, and that the notion that the prestige of wealth and power associated with the outsider is uniquely a problem for missionaries, but not for anyone else, is therefore mistaken. So long as no coercion is going on, I'm still not convinced that mere contact with Christian ideas represents any more of a danger to these communities than contact with secular materialism or the Minimalist Program.

[Semantic Compositions]

Eric: I haven't read any such stories about Luigi (AND I SURE HAVEN'T WRITTEN THEM), but if you've got a strong stomach, you might wish to Google a Flash video titled "Son of a Peach". Curses on the coworker who destroyed my innocence by informing me of its existence!

[Wayne Leman]

I happen to be an SIL member. I have closely followed this debate over the years. I, too, am bothered when SIL members cross the line and proselytize. Our organization makes it clear to us what we must not do.

As for whether or not our field research is a means to a religious aim, let me speak to that. I happen to be an incurable linguist. I would study languages, like any other academic linguist (of which I am one), even if I were not a member of SIL. My father was a natural linguist. His first language was not English. I grew up hearing him imitate people who spoke various languages. I couldn't help but be interested in languages. The high point of any day's research is when I discover some new word in the language to put in the dictionary. I thoroughly enjoy linguistic research. I have enjoyed all my formal studies in linguistics at several universities. Never once did I proselytize in any of these programs.

My research grammar has been useful for Cheyennes and others. I have published a large volume of Cheyenne texts.

I serve as a member of a Cheyenne team creating a rather large new Cheyenne dictionary (http://www.lulu.com/cdkc).

In our case, we were invited by spiritual leaders of the tribe to help them translate the Bible to their language. Should we have told them no, when that is what they wanted? We accepted their invitation.

Through my "secular" academic research and publications, the Cheyenne people have gained a greater sense of pride in their own language. I have taught many classes at their college, linguistics as well as literacy. I do so because those activities are worthwhile on their own merits. I attend linguistics conferences for the same reasons other academic linguists do.

There are a good number of us within SIL who would do good field research and publish the data, even if there were no Bible translation involved.

Let's not let some bad apples spoil the whole bushel, in any organization, whether it be SIL, LSA, UNESCO, or wherever.

In SIL we really do try to be an academic organization that not only serves the minority languages of the world, including endangered languages, but also the rest of the academic community. Unfortunately, not all SIL members have the same love (or aptitude, for that matter) for linguistic research that some of the rest of us do. Some do see their language research as a means to do Bible translation.

I would rather see language research as something good in and of itself.

Oh, re: Shoebox, SIL continues to support it through its successor Toolbox, which is an even better program. There is a discussion group devoted to Toolbox/Shoebox issues, open to anyone:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/ShoeboxToolbox-Field-Linguists-Toolbox/topics

I personally don't think that Bible translations in a language are the best form of documentation for that language. I encourage my SIL coworkers to publish texts, dictionaries, and reference grammars for that purpose. But we all know, I think, of some languages where the only remaining documentation is of religious texts recorded by Jesuit priests or missionaries of other religious persuasions. Something is better than nothing. But many things are better than "something"! :-)

[Wayne Leman]

As for the initial question that started this latest chapter in the ongoing debate about SIL, I personally wish that there were some other entity, besides SIL, which would have the qualifications and commitment to maintain the ISO standards for language name abbreviations in Unicode and elsewhere. There is no need to tie that work to the Ethnologue, IMO. Let's remove the source of irritation some people feel from having the ISO worked connected to SIL. The debate that has occurred is healthy and appropriate. But this particular debate wouldn't have to take place if some other entity could do what SIL consented to do.

[Albert Bickford]

Thank you for writing up these comments, since I was unable to attend the symposium.

In the course of debates such as this, I have been puzzled by the term "proselytize", which seems to hold a key role in the debate. However, it is not at all clear to me that it is being used in a consistent fashion by different writers. For some, it seems to mean "to coerce a change of religious belief", for others to mean something more like "to make known a religious belief and invite people to adopt it" (e.g., perhaps, by translating the Bible). The term, obviously, has strongly negative connotations, so accusing a person or organization of proselytizing has quite a bit of emotive force. But, if different people are using the term in different ways, then the discussion is generating more heat than light. As an SIL member, I would especially be concerned about accusations that are made on the basis of a milder definition of the term, but in a context where the harsher and more insidious sense might well be understood. So, it would be helpful to me for writers to clarify exactly what sorts of activities they are referring to when they use the term.

[Claire]

SC, many thanks for writing this up (and I hope my talk made up for the bit you had to miss because of it!)

I have a post in the works about this issue, but here are three quick comments:

1) I get the impression that the SIL membership and activities are very different in different parts of the world. In Australia, for example, I can think of cases where SIL members were very valuable in helping academic linguists interact with missionary missionaries, in smoothing paths and helping to alleviate some of the anti-linguistic "these people must speak English and only English in order to be saved" ideas. Then again, these communities have been Christian for some time and that makes a big difference. But point stands: SIL isn't a homogeneous organisation.

2) Another issue that hasn't been brought up is professional accountability. When an academic linguist goes to the field, it's usually pretty clear what their primary (and only) affiliation is, and why they are there. People may not understand the role, but it's a well-defined one. SIL members, by definition, cannot be perceived to be in the same position. No matter what the personal convictions and behaviour of any single member are, they are in the field as representatives of an organisation with a dual structure and purpose. That needs discussion.

3) Literacy. Literacy is not neutral and has profound political and social consequences. All linguistic actions do, at some level. I see in general an acute lack of awareness of these issues (or perhaps an unwillingness to confront these issues) amongst many linguists, but particularly amongst SIL linguists. The way their policy has been repeatedly characterised to me is "we offer linguistic and literacy skills, and we'd also like to introduce new people to God and Jesus, but these two things are separate, and if they don't want the latter, that's ok." My problem is that it's not that simple! especially the first part. this applies to all linguists, missionary or academic.

[Wayne Leman]

Claire's third point was:

"Literacy. Literacy is not neutral and has profound political and social consequences. All linguistic actions do, at some level. I see in general an acute lack of awareness of these issues (or perhaps an unwillingness to confront these issues) amongst many linguists, but particularly amongst SIL linguists. The way their policy has been repeatedly characterised to me is "we offer linguistic and literacy skills, and we'd also like to introduce new people to God and Jesus, but these two things are separate, and if they don't want the latter, that's ok." My problem is that it's not that simple! especially the first part. this applies to all linguists, missionary or academic."

You're right, Claire. Literacy has always been viewed as a necessary part of SIL's work, and for the reason you mentioned. But the first part of this is now changing, slowly, within SIL. Some of us are recognizing that there really are people groups who do not wish to become literate in their own language. And if they do not, it is wrong for anyone, no matter how noble they might feel their motivations are, or how strongly they might feel they know "better", to try to make people become literate when they do not wish to do so. There are now consultants and one or two departments within SIL devoted to what some call non-print media. Of course, the translated Bible would appear in some non-print medium, since, as everyone knows SIL members help translate the Bible.

You are also right to raise the question of whether it is right for any organization to have dual structures and dual goals. SIL members themselves have been debating these issues for decades and continue to do so. I'm not saying that the debates are of the highest priority for many SIL members, but they still do take place, including on email discussion lists.

I grew up in a small village where we were forcibly colonized twice, and lost two languages before our last colonizers, the Americans, brought us our third language, English. I freely acknowledge that because of the pain of my family in going through these linguistic losses, I advocate for the rights of minority language groups to maintain their languages, *if* they wish to do so. Perhaps this paragraph isn't relevant to the rest of the discussion, but to me it helps clarify that by no means is all of my motivation religious as a field and academic linguist and member of SIL. I have moral concerns about the treatment of language minorities based on prejudice and discrimination which my village family has experienced. I am motivated to help people have choices if they wish them. In my case I was asked by the Cheyennes to help them produce bilingual education materials to help them preserve the language. I had no training in development of such curriculum but one can learn quickly on the job.

Like you, I feel very negatively toward those who have made the people in my village as well as the Cheyennes with whom I have worked feel like they have to change themselves to become like "white Christians" in order to be acceptable to God. Although it may not help much in debates about SIL, I suspect that most SIL members feel the same way about other Christians who present their Christianity in such strong ethnocentric terms.

[Dan Everett]

I read the summary of the missionaries and linguists symposium at the LA LSA meeting, organized by Lise Dobrin.

The summary of my talk is almost completely erroneous. I did not give a talk opposing SIL. I said that everything I was about to say I had already published in Intercom and that my views were no secret to those in SIL who knew me. My view is that SIL is a missionary organization, not a scientific organization (though it has many superb scientists as members) and that the LSA should be aware of this. I explicitly said that I opposed actions against SIL or its members, other than what I just said about formal recognition of its missionary status.

I also said that I do not believe in God and that is correct. But nothing I said at the LSA meeting was a new idea I had after leaving SIL.

Dan Everett

[Claire]

But Dan, the LSA is also not a scientific organisation, although it has scientists as members. Not all linguistics is science and categorising the field monolithically as such is, I think, unhelpful. Come on, the LSA doesn't even have an ethics statement! (although it will...)

Thanks for your comments Wayne. Have there been conclusions about the dual structure issue? (I didn't mean to paint them as irreconcilable, by the way, and I suspect that in some areas, when the two mesh, SIL is more effective than many other organisations.)