As part of the 2025 Kolehiyo ng Agham Panlipunan at Pilosopiya (KAPP) Serye ng Panayam, the Department’s Assoc. Prof. Jesus Federico Hernandez presented his talk entitled “ON ALL FRONTS: Linguistic Trauma and the Fragility of Philippine Languages” last 19 November 2025.
The lecture delves into the concept of language endangerment and explores what this truly means in the Philippine context. It elaborates on the effects of multicolonial trauma, political and sociocultural linguicide, displacement, and poverty, and how all of these intertwine and affect how language is perceived. Linguistic trauma and fragility come into this, as time and time again, Filipinos end up not being able to speak in their own native tongues, as a result of not only economic viability, but also because of government, academic, and corporate policies that silence those who do.
With such a complex reason behind endangerment, combating it with documentation and archiving proves to be lacking. It is the people, the speakers of the language, who must be protected first and foremost to effectively combat endangerment. Thus, the lecture calls for its audience to rethink and reframe the very concept of language endangerment. It is not simply the loss of language due to time, but a systematic and deliberate oppression of the people behind the language.
The lecture invites its listeners to not only stop at documenting and revitalizing these languages. It must go beyond academics and step into the reclamation of the language, reformation of the system, and restoration of the speakers’ dignity to exercise its political, social, and moral dimensions. All these work together to pave the way to truly addressing the root causes of endangerment.
Published by Romina Joyce Y. Buan
