Centering the Speech Community (2024)

Abstract: How can NLP/AI practitioners engage with oral societies and develop locally appropriate language technologies? We report on our experience of working together over five years in a remote community in the far north of Australia, and how we prototyped simple language technologies to support our collaboration. We navigated different understandings of language, the functional differentiation of oral vs institutional languages, and the distinct technology opportunities for each. Our collaboration unsettled the first author’s western framing of language as data for exploitation by machines, and we devised a design pattern that seems better aligned with local interests and aspirations. We call for new collaborations on the design of locally appropriate technologies for languages with primary orality.

## introduction the world's living languages can be categorised into ∼500 institutional languages and a further ∼6,500 local vernaculars, or oral languages (fig. 1 ). institutional languages feature standardised orthographies and widespread literacy. local languages feature 'primary orality' @xcite , and include ancestral languages with an unbroken history of oral transmission and languages in danger of disappearing. this paper addresses the languages in figure 1(b) , which still play a significant role in intergenerational knowledge transmission, also known as 'languages with sustainable orality' @xcite . in such speech communities, people interact with the outside world using a language of wider communication, often a variety of an institutional language. for example, the speech community in gunbalanya in the remote north of australia relies on kunwinjku [gup] (pop. 2,000) for local interaction, alongside aboriginal english as the language of wider communication. the latter is the natural target for the usual suite of language technologies, figure 1 : distribution of languages by vitality, as measured using the expanded intergenerational disruption scale (egids, @xcite , with statistics drawn from @xcite including speech to text and machine translation, supporting participation in the global information society (cf. @xcite . what do we offer a local language like kunwinjku? one answer is that we offer it the same technologies as the institutional languages, under the belief that all languages are equal. yet all languages are not equal, in the sense that languages are functionally differentiated within the linguistic repertoire of speech communities. in light of this reality, how might we engage local speech communities in the design of language technologies? in this paper, we centre the needs, desires and aspirations of a local speech community as we rethink the design of language technologies. what are good ways in from outside, i.e., approaches for 'newcomers' to engage with 'locals'? 1 our starting point is respect for the agency of local people and a commitment of newcomers to embrace local matters of concern. our contribution is a set of insights about ways of working with local speech communities, along with a machine-in-the-loop design pattern which enhances local agency. yet this is not an endpoint so much as a first step, and we hope that others will participate in exploring agency-enhancing futures for nlp/ai. this is qualitative research that could be called learning to participate. it is loosely related to participatory design, but where the newcomer was 'participated' by locals @xcite . it is an instance of autobiographical design, "design research drawing on extensive, genuine usage by those creating or building the system" @xcite . in our interactions with each other, and with all participants, we employed an indigenous research method known as yarning @xcite . by beginning from a commitment to build on local strengths instead of problematising deficits, this work qualifies as appreciative inquiry @xcite . this paper is organised as follows. we discuss ways in to local communities, including linguistic engagements and the various ways that computer scientists usually build on them (sec. 3). we present a narrative of the first author's engagement in a remote indigenous community where the second author is a senior elder (sec. 4). we report a construct of 'working together' in the intercultural or 'third' space, where language technologies support the internally-motivated work, including three prototypes that supported our collaboration. finally, we draw out common themes and discuss wider implications for engaging speech communities (sec. 5). we begin by setting the scene concerning oral vernacular languages. ## key features of oral vernaculars we follow @xcite in understanding a speech community as a group that is unified by a shared identity reflected in culture and language. local communities are often minoritised, sociopolitically marginalised, and economically disadvantaged. as rural communities, they typically share other features: infrastructural problems (internet, transportation), geographic isolation which amplifies the effects of poverty, distrust of outsiders and outside institutions, natural resource extraction, less exposure to technology, particular environmental hazards and health risks, dense so-cial networks, and a close relationship to the land @xcite . concerning language, a common feature of local speech communities is diglossia, with functional differentiation between two or more languages, e.g., the vehicular language with its external functions including literacy, versus the vernacular language with its local functions including intergenerational knowledge transmission. these local oral languages include emerging speech varieties such as creoles and mixed languages. this is also a space of high morphological complexity, language variation, orthographic variability, language mixing, and uncertain boundaries. language may be conceived differently to western conceptions, e.g.: as owned, with consequences for data sovereignty; and as a situated and embodied social practice, exceeding the notion of utterance as grammatical form and propositional content. 2 it is not surprising that some would prefer to keep alive the fiction of a language as a bounded entity with a standardised orthography, and position data scarcity as the remaining challenge. however, there is no need to 'solve' these 'problems' by shoehorning oral languages into the template provided by institutional languages. the necessary correction, we believe, is to shift our attention from languages to speech communities. ## discussion relationships. working through reciprocal relationships is required for institutional approval of indigenous research in australia @xcite . scholars in linguistics and hci have reported that reciprocity is central to successful research engagements @xcite @xcite @xcite . we observed that language learning offers a natural pathway into these reciprocal relationships, opening the way for local participation. it repositions newcomers as learners, and locals as authorities. simple language technologies supported the first author in learning to participate, which in turn enabled us to work together more effectively in the school and the ranger program over an extended period. there was a synergy between the local preoccupation with intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge, and with a newcomer learning to participate in the local lifeworld supported by language technology (fig. 2(d )). this prospect has been described as relational language technology @xcite . the designs in section 4 helped to build the capacity of a newcomer, but we have also begun exploring ways that participation by newcomers activates intergenerational knowledge transmission @xcite @xcite , leading to mutually-reinforcing actions in the intercultural space (fig. 2(d) ; @xcite @xcite . agency. the eurocentric position begins from the space of institutional languages (fig. 1 ), and leads to calls to improve literacy in local languages as a precondition for a bright future for nlp @xcite , often premised on 'social good' and other externallydriven agendas @xcite @xcite ; schwartz 2022, p726; flavelle and lachler 2023. centering the local speech community is a decolonising practice which recognises the sovereignty of indigenous communities @xcite . indigenous peoples have a right to self-determination, including control over their languages, and not ceding the development of their languages to outside 'experts' @xcite . language owners are standing up to exploitation and extraction by nlp/ai practitioners @xcite . a better alternative for newcomers is to centre the other, visiting and revisiting a community for long enough to understand the local matters of concern, and observing how locals already enact their agency (e.g., @xcite . from here it is a natural step to take 'primary orality' as the starting point for design @xcite . people, practices, places. the three designs concern three ways of situating technology. they are as rudimentary as one could imagine: addressing people, using the right vocabulary while working together on a culturally meaningful task, and knowing important facts about the locality. they align with the emphasis of third paradigm hci on the social, cultural, and physical situatedness of users and analysts @xcite . they relate to local local languages and lifeways from inside @xcite . they suggest areas for further work to 'provincialise' technology @xcite . epistemology. steven entered arnhem land with a western epistemology of language as a bounded lexicogrammatical code, of language as a formal system that can be manipulated by program, and of language as primary data to be fed into technology. as quid pro quo for participation he offered promises for technology-mediated literacy development, information access, and language revitalisation. dean saw the promise of all of this for the school and ranger program, as local institutions that interface with the outside world. however, locals did not warm to this agenda, and one reason might be that the local epistemology of language is different. the kunwinjku word for language is kunwok, 'the talk', which encompasses speech and stories, along with the associated knowledge and country. if locals talk about teaching kunwok it is a metaphysical error for a newcomer to assume this is a statement about grammatical fluency in language-as-code. such statements usually concern language-as-social-practice (cf. leonard, 2017), and fluency in kunwok as cultural fluency (in which language is always implicated). this explains why dean encouraged steven to mix kunwinjku and english, just as locals do when functioning in the intercultural space. design pattern. a popular vision for mainstream nlp/ai is to deliver language technologies to all languages. however, in the case of languages beyond the first 500, languages with primary orality (fig. 1 ), there is a pattern of 'centering the machine', harnessing a human-in-the-loop to build machine capacity (fig. 4(a) ). this amounts to a net loss of agency, and it perpetuates local disenfranchisement. westerners are habituated to this, routinely ceding data in exchange for services, and this is leading to the rise of large language models and to societal threats best described as existential. those indigenous communities that have remained resilient in the face of centuries of outside pressure have done so by guarding their agency. thus, it should come as no surprise that a newcomer's extractive engagement was reformed by locals into an agency-enhancing engagement. our designs are all cases of centering the community, using a machine-in-the-loop to build the capacity of humans (fig. 4(b) , @xcite . three linguistic interactions, addressing people, working together, and connecting to country, involve linguistic productions by a local that are captured in a technology that assists learning by a newcomer. we only scratched the surface, and there is an opportunity for nlp/ai to curate this content for the learner while modelling the learner's progress. this is still nlp, data processing that uses knowledge of language @xcite . novelty. this approach is distinct from experiential language learning which is concerned with adding an experiential element to classroom programs, and from self-directed language learning which assumes that there is a teacher and substantial learning resources @xcite @xcite . it represents a departure from dyadic human-app interactions to interaction with shared objects in a shared space @xcite . it is offered as an approach to participation in the lifeworld of a local oral society when there is no recourse to formal programs with classrooms, teachers, and learning resources @xcite @xcite . instead, we "turn everyday situations between [speakers] and [learners] into 'sites of language learning' through the development of information technology tools" @xcite . generalising. reviewers of this and related papers usually saw the focus on locality as a problem, e.g., "it is unclear how much their findings can be applied to other language communities, in particular when there is no common language between the newcomer and the locals." the common expectation is that technologies should generalise across sites. this happens when "qualitative research ... is being evaluated from the perspective of positivism [leading to] inappropriate demands ... to explain how research conducted in the global south or with marginalized communities 'generalizes' or applies to other settings" @xcite . there is no shortage of lessons to be learned, only not through induction but rather abduction, inference to the most likely explanation. failure in recruiting locals led to an epistemological shift -from language-as-data to language-as-socialpractice -thence to designs that honoured local agency in setting the agenda. centering the speech community is a lesson that can be applied anywhere. for example, in the case of the irish language, making this shift would involve identifying the speech communities, including a bilingual speech community centered on the gaeltacht with oral transmission of irish as a first language, distinct from another bilingual speech community of l1 speakers of english who are learning irish as a second language in which the written form may be more central. ## conclusion the first author is often asked for advice concerning "good ways in" to indigenous communities, and "good ways forward" for staying longer, or going deeper. some people say they could never engage with an indigenous community because they "wouldn't know where to begin." we hope to have shown that answers to such questions are highly contingent and local. although our way in and way forward cannot be replicated, some lessons might apply broadly, such as the basic human act of sitting with local people and cultivating a space of openness and possibility. indeed, this is a well-trodden path: "promoting sociability in which mutually engaging communication can occur" @xcite ; building shared understanding and realising collective possibilities through doing language @xcite ; and practicing a type of learning-through-engagement that local people prize as 'two-way' @xcite . in the space of local oral languages (fig. 1 ), technology engagements could adopt the frame of community-based language development @xcite , and seek not to extract but support. in the space of minoritised groups, it is a moral and political act to prioritise the interests of a speech community above acts that treat their language as a data resource. centering the speech community is an act of alignment. as a us government language technology program manager asked the first author "whose side are you on?" in this contested space, "this underscores the importance of non-indigenous people developing a moral and political framework through which to be supportive of indigenous people" @xcite . how do we centre the local speech community? we have exemplified an appreciative approach that begins with local strengths and with what people are already doing. we have adduced the themes of relating to people on the ground, participating in culturally meaningful practices, all anchored in their old and living connections to their land. we have suggested an agency-enhancing design pattern. it turned out that language acquisitionby humans not machines -was a useful focus in this particular community, and an effective way to support a newcomer to learn to participate in the local lifeworld, and to begin working together with locals. and this is no end in itself, but an ongoing process, commitment, and orientation.