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Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures, and Ecosystems (CELCE)

Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures, and Ecosystems (CELCE)

The Language and Nature satellite together researchers from:

Language and Nature takes a multidisciplinary view of the symbiotic relationship between indigenous languages and local ecosystems, examining expressions of, and threats and challenges to, the Language–Nature relationship in areas of the world exhibiting very different historical and socio-economic backgrounds.

Regions of the world with greatest biodiversity are shown to exhibit greatest linguistic diversity, strongly suggesting that the relationship between Language and Nature is spatially and temporally determined.

link to CELCE website

Indigenous languages reflect the close relationship between people and their natural environment, embodying the complex relationship humans enjoy with landscape and seasons. These connections can be broken when indigenous languages are severed from the ecosystems in which they arose; a situation that can arise through replacement of indigenous languages by more dominant lingua franca, through degradation of the ecosystem, through depopulation, or through forced or voluntary removal of the indigenous language community from the local ecosystem.

If you are interested in joining, please contact Janet Watson J.C.E.Watson@leeds.ac.uk

Events

CELCE Talk. Prof Ian Maddieson: What accounts for the geographical distribution of tone languages?

Speaker: Professor Ian Maddieson (University of New Mexico). Title: What accounts for the geographical distribution of tone languages? (with a discursus on...

Research Talk: "Politics of Language, Politics of Death" by Dr Gerald Roche

Speaker: Dr Gerald Roche is a senior lecturer in politics at La Trobe University, on the unceded lands of the...

CELCE Research Talk: Convivencia across linguistic and disciplinary borders: the case of Al-Andalus and the contemporary Maghreb

Centre of Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems (CELCE) Research talk To join on Teams, please email Prof Janet Watson. Title:...

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News

Success: British Council International Heritage Protection and Sustainable Development grant awarded to Janet Watson

Janet Watson has been awarded a British Council International Heritage Protection and Sustainable Development grant, which will fund a Yemeni...

Language and/or Nature in Southern Arabia

The online Language and/or Nature in Southern Arabia series hosted PGR students from Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia on 9th...

Online workshops on Language and/or Nature in Southern Arabia resuming on 1st September

The first workshop after the summer break will take place on 1st September at 1pm BST, and will focus on...

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