PhD research proposal by Philippa Law:
Audience engagement with endangered/minority language media

Background and rationale

The media is a vital tool in preserving and promoting endangered/minority languages. The more prestige a language has, the greater the likelihood that it will survive; a language tends to increase in prestige if it’s used in the media (see e.g. Endangered Languages by L Grenoble & L Whaley, 1998).

In communities where endangered/minority languages have public backing, people may support the existence of endangered/minority language media in principle but that doesn’t mean they actually engage with what’s provided (see e.g. Broadcasting in Irish by I Watson, 2003).

I will research the conditions that facilitate or hinder speakers’ engagement with endangered/minority language media, and then apply this knowledge to a case study by producing and evaluating a pilot media service in an appropriate endangered/minority language.

This will be valuable research because if we can provide evidence to show what kind of media service is successful at increasing audience engagement with a given target language, we may be able to use the media more effectively to help save/promote the language.

My supervisor has written about the need for more practice-based research in communities (Discourse and Media by C Cotter, in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 2001) and with my experience of public service broadcasting, I’m keen that my research into audience engagement should be useful to media practitioners as well as academics.

What will I do and how will I do it?

My big research question is: What are the conditions that facilitate or hinder endangered/minority language speakers’ engagement with endangered/minority language media?

At first I’ll consider ‘media’ in the widest sense of the word, to include all platforms and delivery mechanisms, from ‘traditional’ media such as radio, tv and print, to ‘new’ media such as podcasts and virals and ‘DIY’ media such as zines and newsletters.

By reviewing existing literature and interviewing audiences and practitioners, I’ll look at the different situations of a selection of endangered/minority languages, attitudes of speakers and non-speakers, the format and content of existing media provision, its accessibility, and any other factors I identify as having an impact on the success of endangered/minority media provision.

Next I’ll identify a language that appears to have the potential to benefit from a (realistically achievable) pilot media service and develop a hypothesis about what medium, format, structure and content may be successful. This will become my case study.

In the second year of my PhD I’ll go out into the field and produce and disseminate a pilot (whether it be a radio show, magazine, vodcast…) that matches the criteria in my hypothesis. Alternatively I may enable speakers of the target language to do it themselves, if that is more appropriate.

Finally I’ll study what happens in the pilot and evaluate to what extent speakers of the language engage with the new service. The evaluation methods will be considered in the first year of my PhD.