Last 25-26 April, faculty members from the Department facilitated “The Essentials of Language Documentation in the Philippines,” a workshop which aimed to “equip those who were interested in the scientific study of language with knowledge and skills necessary in language documentation” as part of the 2025 CSSP Extramural Training Seminar for Social Science Teachers organized by the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP).
The four facilitators from the Department were Inst. JM De Pano, Assoc. Prof. Kristina Gallego, Asst. Prof. Fellow Kritsana Canilao, and Asst. Prof. Noah Cruz. De Pano’s opening lectures served as an introduction to contextualize the linguistic landscape of the Philippines, as well as to language documentation. Canilao meanwhile equipped the lecture-goers with the necessary skills to assess their own communities’ linguistic and cultural needs. Next, Gallego focused on the specificities of fieldwork during her lecture, such as the types of data and data collection methods, alongside workflows before, during, and after fieldwork and data elicitation sessions.
De Pano and Gallego delved into the safekeeping of data before, during, and after data elicitation in their lecture on data management, archiving, and community validation. Finally, Cruz discussed the types of language vitality assessments and their significance, alongside questions for general assessments and practical challenges that come with these.
During the synthesis, De Pano presented, “Recontextualizing Language Documentation in the Philippines,” discussing the history of language documentation in the Philippines from the earliest form of documentation during the Spanish colonization up to the present times. The lecture reiterates Paz’s claim in 1984, where she stated that collaborative language documentation emphasizes the significance of the languages of the Philippines, but especially the members of the ethnolinguistic groups who use these languages.
Published by Patricia Anne Ocampo
