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About the Book
Issues of language and identity can make or break any kind of development project—in large part because they determine the degree of access to new information, ideas and behavior, but also because they influence a community’s willingness and desire to make any kind of change in the first place. Failure to take these concepts into account can result in irrelevant projects, unused products, programs without impact, and lost opportunities. But the relationship between language and identity is complex and varied—and even more so in a highly multilingual, massively migrating world.
These are the issues that were addressed in the Pike Center symposium on the theme of Language and Identity in a Multilingual, Migrating World. The symposium was held 10–15 May 2018 in Penang, Malaysia. This volume contains the full text of the papers that were presented at the symposium.
About the Editors
J. Stephen Quakenbush is Director of Strategic Initiatives (Language Services) with SIL International. He has served as Director of SIL Philippines, Academic Services Director for SIL Asia, and also International Academic Services Director. He has published on language development, language vitality and endangered languages. Otherwise, his publications have centered on the linguistics and sociolinguistics of Agutaynen, an Austronesian language of Palawan, Philippines, where he engaged in translation and language development work over a twenty-year period. He holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University, and is a Fellow of the Pike Center for Integrative Scholarship.
Gary F. Simons is a Research Associate with SIL International (Dallas, TX) and Executive Editor of the Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/). He is also Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics at Dallas International University. Previously he has served in SIL as Director of Academic Computing (1986-1999), Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs (1999-2009), and Chief Research Officer (2010-2024). Early in his career he was involved in language development activities in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. More recently he has contributed to the development of cyberinfrastructure for linguistics as co-founder of the Open Language Archives Community (http://www.language-archives.org/) and co-developer of the ISO 639-3 standard of three-letter identifiers for all known languages of the world (http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/). He holds a PhD in general linguistics (with minor emphases in computer science and classics) from Cornell University. He is an author or editor of over 100 publications (http://www.sil.org/~simonsg/).