of ethnolinguistic backgrounds. Thus, employing a traditional approach to survey in PNG and administering a large range of qualitative tools would both be overly time-consuming and provide more
data than was appropriate, consequently requiring complex analysis. This was particularly the case for the four northern languages where, because of the ease of contact with the politically and economically
dominant Kuanua-speaking community, vitality was most in question.
This survey therefore called for the production of a new tool which provided enough detail to make a vitality assessment in situ while the tool was being administered, not during data analysis after the
survey as is typical.
2 Methodology
2.1 Initial Approaches to Tool Design
At first, the design of a tool foundered on the complexity involved in making an assessment of vitality. Studying approaches described by various theorists revealed the vast array of factors that influence
ethnolinguistic vitality: status, demographics and institutional support Giles, Bourhis, and Taylor 1977, ethnicity and nationalism Bratt Paulston 2000, motivation Karan 2000 as well as a whole host of
other factors described by Edwards 2010:100
–101. A rapid assessment would not be able to consider all of these. Attempts were made to reduce these to those most relevant to the PNG context and to
explore tools, such as Landweer’s Indicators of Ethnolinguistic Vitality IEV 2009, which had been applied before. Under closer scrutiny however, because the IEV had been developed for the more
common and ethnolinguistically simpler environments typically encountered in PNG, it proved inadequate to assess vitality in the suburban heterogeneous complexity faced by the survey team.
The top down approach to tool design was not successful. Not only did it present an unmanageable array of factors, it also failed to isolate any simple enough to assess as rapidly as required. At this point
therefore, the team decided to try another approach. Rather than think of what influences vitality in general, the team thought specifically of what the bare minimum level of vitality would be to satisfy
stakeholders’ requirements for participation in the proposed multi-language project. As vitality is a scalable feature of language communities and the product of a combination of
factors, a description of distinguishing factors defines a graded scale to guide assessment. One such scale is known as the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale or EGIDS Lewis and Simons 2010.
Background research indicated that all of the five languages on this survey were likely to fall into one of the EGIDS levels described in Table 2.
Table 2. EGIDS values relevant to this survey
EGIDS level Description
5 Written The language is used orally by all generations and is effectively used in written
form in parts of the community. 6a Vigorous
The language is used orally by all generations and is being learned by children as their first language.
6b Threatened The language is used orally by all generations but only some of the child-bearing
generation are transmitting it to their children. 7 Shifting
The child-bearing generation knows the language well enough to use it among themselves but none are transmitting it to their children.
8a Moribund The only remaining active speakers of the language are members of the
grandparent generation. 8b Nearly Extinct
The only remaining speakers of the language are members of the grandparent generation or older who have little opportunity to use the language.
9 Dormant The language serves as a reminder of heritage identity for an ethnic community.
No one has more than symbolic proficiency. This is the level of sustainable identity. This is the state where no fully proficient speakers remain but the
language is still closely associated with the community identity and is used as a symbolic marker and reinforcer of that identity.
Being discrete, these individual descriptions contain a narrow focus that top down approaches to vitality assessment do not. Because of this, they enable research to concentrate on explicitly defined
variables and thus make tool design manageable as will be shown in the following section. Presenting EGIDS to stakeholders resulted in their decision that the minimum vitality for
participation in the proposed multi-language project would be an EGIDS score of no weaker than 7.
1
However, as alluded to in Section 1.2, vitality as weak as EGIDS 7 was only acceptable to stakeholders provided that certain additional factors were also found to be present. Assessment of these additional
factors was provided for by goals subsequent to our priority of assessing vitality. Thus, if an EGIDS score of 7 was identified, pursuit of additional goals would be essential. However, an EGIDS score stronger
than this would not require assessment of dependent factors because vitality alone would be sufficient for an initial invitation to participate.
In reviewing the criteria for a score of EGIDS 7, the survey team realised that an attempt to assess this level exclusively could be com
plicated. Although assessing that “none are transmitting it to their children” is relatively straightforward, adequately assessing knowing the language “well enough” is
problematic even if a definition of “well enough” can be agreed. Thus, the survey team took a further step in goal clarification by choosing to define assessment focus not in terms of what is, but rather what
is not. In doing so, they were pursuing what in participatory literature is commonly termed “optimal ignorance” which “emphasises the usefulness of information, unlike questionnaires where the strong
tendency is to go for an excess of data” Kumar 2002:41. Indicators as revealed in the descriptors of EGIDS scores either side of level 7 are simpler to isolate. Demonstrating the presence of these therefore
indicates a vitality either weaker or stronger than EGIDS 7; their absence thus reveals EGIDS 7 itself. This thought process is shown in the decision tree in Figure 1. By this point, the provision of these
indicators had set the stage for the design of a tool to isolate them.
1
Although in this case the minimum vitality condition was an EGIDS score of 7, SIL typically works with communities with a vitality of EGIDS greater than 6b or 6a.
2.2 Tool Description and Administration
