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SIL International

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SIL International is a worldwide non-profit evangelical Christian organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document lesser-known languages in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development.

SIL International is the sister organization of Wycliffe Bible Translators, an agency dedicated to translating the Bible into minority languages. The organization provides a database of its research into the world's languages through its Ethnologue, a database of the world's languages. It has more than 6,000 members from over 50 countries.

History

SIL International, originally the Summer Institute of Linguistics, started as a small summer training session in Arkansas in 1934 to train missionaries of what later became Wycliffe Bible Translators in basic linguistic, anthropological and translation principles. The founder was William Cameron Townsend (1896-1982), a former Disciples of Christ missionary to Guatemala. Its headquarters are located in the southern section of Dallas, Texas.

From the 1950s to 1987, SIL training was hosted by the University of Oklahoma in Norman. The agreement between the university and SIL was terminated in 1987 after a controversy about SIL being involved in missionary activities and its relationship with Latin American governments. SIL training is now offered in many locations around the world.

One of the students at the first summer institute in 1934 was Kenneth L. Pike (1912–2000), who was to become the foremost figure in the history of SIL. He served as SIL's President from 1942–1979 and then as President Emeritus until his death in 2000. He worked at the University of Michigan for many years. SIL's current president is Carolyn P. Miller, who took the office in 1999 and participates in the linguistics program at Houghton College.

Contributions

SIL's principal contribution to linguistics has been the data that has been gathered and analysed from over 1,000 minority and endangered languages[1], many of which had not been previously studied academically. SIL endeavors to share both the data and the results of analysis in order to contribute to the overall knowledge of language. This has resulted in publications on languages such as Hixkaryana and Piraha which have challenged the universality of some linguistic theories. SIL's work has resulted in over 20,000 technical publications, all of which are listed in the SIL Bibliography.[2] Most of these are a reflection of linguistic fieldwork.[3]

SIL's focus has not been on the development of new linguistic theories, but tagmemics, though no longer promoted by SIL, was developed by Kenneth Pike, who also coined the words etic and emic, more widely used today in anthropology.

Another focus of SIL is literacy work, particularly in indigenous languages. SIL assists local, regional, and national agencies that are developing formal and informal education in vernacular languages. These cooperative efforts enable new advances in the complex field of educational development in multilingual and multicultural societies. [4]

SIL provides instructors and instructional materials for linguistics programs at several major institutions of higher learning around the world. In the USA these include Biola University, Moody Bible Institute, Houghton College, University of North Dakota, Northwest Christian College, Bryan College, University of Texas at Arlington, University of Oregon, and Dallas Theological Seminary. Other universities with SIL programmes include Trinity Western University in Canada and Charles Darwin University in Australia.

SIL also presents the fruits of some its research through the International Museum of Culture.[5] Located in Dallas, Texas, it was developed by linguists and anthropologists associated with SIL International for the purpose of celebrating peoples of diverse cultures in an effort to promote greater appreciation and understanding of cultural differences.

International recognition

SIL holds formal consultative status with UNESCO and United Nations, and has been publicly recognized by UNESCO for their work in many parts of Asia.[6] SIL also holds non-governmental organisation status in many countries.

SIL's work has received appreciation and recognition in a number of international settings. In 1973, SIL was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding. This foundation honors outstanding individuals and organizations working in Asia who manifest greatness of spirit in service to the peoples of Asia.[7] Other notable examples include a UNESCO award and the 1979 International Reading Association Literacy Award for literacy work in Papua New Guinea.[8]

Ethnologue and the SIL code

Main article: Ethnologue

The Ethnologue, the most comprehensive guide to the world's languages, is published by SIL. It assigns three-letter codes to languages, which are widely used by other linguists. The 15th edition of the Ethnologue was published in 2005 and generally uses the ISO 639-3 standard.

Controversy

Missionary activities

SIL has been accused of being involved in moving indigenous populations in South America from their native lands to make way for exploitation schemes of North American and European oil corporations. The most well-known example is the case of the Huaorani people in Ecuador, which resulted in many deaths and the moving of the people into reservations controlled by the missionaries.

In 1975, thirty anthropologists signed "The Denouncement of Pátzcuaro", alleging that SIL was a "tool of imperialism", linked to the CIA and "divisions within the communities that constitutes a hindrance to their organisation and the defence of their communal rights".

In 1979, SIL's agreement with the Mexican government was officially terminated, but it continued to be active in that country (Clarke, p. 182). The same happened in 1980 in Ecuador (Yashar 2005, p. 118), although a token presence remained. Remnants of SIL presence were protested in every subsequent Indian uprising (Cleary/Steigenga 2004, p. 37). In the early 1990s, the newly-formed organisation of indigenous people of Ecuador CONAIE once more demanded the expulsion of SIL from the country (Yashar 2005, p. 146).

At a conference of the Inter-American Indian Institute in Merida, Yucatan, in November 1980, delegates denounced the Summer Institute of Linguistics for using a scientific name to conceal its religious agenda and capitalist worldview that was alien to indigenous traditions. (Bonner 1999, p. 20)

John Perkins provides an example of criticism of SIL activity:

I had heard that [Jaime Roldos, President of Ecuador, 1979-81] accused The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), an evangelical missionary group from the United States, of sinister collusion with the oil companies. I was familiar with SIL missionaries from my Peace Corps days. The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had in so many other countries, with the professed goal of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.
SIL had been working extensively with the Huaorani and Matséstribe in the Amazon basin area, during the early years of oil exploration, when a disturbing pattern appeared to emerge. While it might have been a coincidence (and no link was ever proved), stories were told in many Amazonian communities that when seismologists reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education. The condition was that they had to deed their lands to the oil companies.
Rumors abounded that SIL missionaries used an assortment of underhanded techniques to persuade the tribes to abandon their homes and move to the missions. A frequently repeated story was that they had donated food heavily laced with laxatives - then offered medicines to cure the diarrhea epidemic. Throughout Huaorani territory, SIL airdropped false-bottomed food baskets containing tiny radio transmitters; The rumor was that receivers at highly sophisticated communications stations, manned by U.S. military personnel at the army base in Shell [a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador’s Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name it bears], tuned into these transmitters. Whenever a member of the tribe was bitten by a poisonous snake or became seriously ill, an SIL representative arrived with antivenom or the proper medicines - often in oil company helicopters." (John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Plume Publishers, January, 2006, paperback p.166-7)

SIL was allegedly financed initially by expatriate coffee processors in Guatemala, and later by the Rockefellers, Standard Oil, the timber company Weyerhauser, and USAID. [...] By the 1980s, [SIL] was expelled from Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama, and restricted in Colombia and Peru. (Cleary/Steigenga 2004, p. 36)

In response to the allegations that Perkins published, SIL posted the following on their website (SIL Responds to Errors in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"), referring to an earlier (2004) publication of the book:

John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (San Francisco: Berrett Koehler Publications, Inc., 2004), makes a number of egregious errors in fact and presents false statements about SIL's activities in Ecuador in the 1950-60s. The comments are based on rumors that have never been substantiated and are contrary to documented eyewitness accounts. Throughout its 70 year history, SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) has been an active advocate and supporter of indigenous language communities in Latin America and around the world.
SIL entered Ecuador in 1953 in response to the expressed invitation of then President Galo Plaza to study, record and work on translation of materials into indigenous languages. SIL performed the work it was invited to do and maintained a full reporting relationship with Ecuador's Ministry of Education through 1982. At the urging and support of many indigenous communities, respected journalists, and civic leaders the government granted visas to certain SIL members to continue their activities until work was completed in 1992. SIL's linguistic research work was donated to local universities and is a matter of public record. Today a number of indigenous groups in eastern Ecuador enjoy their protected land as a result, in part, to SIL's advocacy before the government.
Perkins contends that SIL worked under the sponsorship and in support of oil companies in the Amazon. This is absolutely untrue. SIL has had no involvement with oil exploration and has never had any agreements with oil companies or any other parties to promote oil exploration. In fact, SIL members were known to have intervened to prevent violence between indigenous communities and oil company workers. Further, the accusation by Perkins that SIL has received support from the Rockefellers in Amazonia is also false. SIL has never received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.[9]

Today, according to SIL's annual report, funds are donations from individuals, churches, and other organizations, channelled to SIL by the Wycliffe Bible Translators.[10]

Criticism of SIL activities

Other sites

References

  • Ruth Margaret Brend , Kenneth Lee Pike (eds.): The Summer Institute of Linguistics: Its Works and Contributions (Walter De Gruyter 1977), ISBN 90-279-3355-3.
  • Gerard Colby, Charlotte Dennett: Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (Harper Collins 1995), ISBN 0-06-016764-5. This book contains allegations of Rockefeller's use of American missionaries, and in particular, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, who cooperated in conducting surveys, transporting CIA agents and indirectly assisting in the genocide of tribes in the Amazon basin.
  • John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2004), ISBN 1-57675-301-8. Contains several references to SIL missionary activities and displacement of indigenous peoples in South America.
  • John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Plume Publishers 2006), ISBN 0-452-28708-1. Contains several references to SIL missionary activities and displacement of indigenous peoples in South America.
  • W. A Willibrand: Oklahoma Indians and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (1953).
  • Søren Hvalkof, Peter Aaby (eds.): Is God an American? An Anthropological Perspective on the Missionary Work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (A Survival International Document, International Workgroup for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen/London 1981), ISBN 87-980717-2-6.
  • Eni Pucinelli Orlandi: Sprache, Glaube, Macht: "Ethik und Sprachenpolitik / Language, Faith, Power: Ethics and Language Policy", in: Brigitte Schlieben-Lange (ed.): Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 116, Katechese, Sprache, Schrift (University of Siegen / J.B. Metzler 1999) The author presents a discourse analysis of the practices of SIL.
  • Laurie K. Hart: "The Story of the Wycliffe Translators: Pacifying the Last Frontiers". In: NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, vol. VII, no. 10 (1973). This article describes SIL's collaboration with US oil corporations and military governments in South America in the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Michael Erard: How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages. In: New York Times, July 19th, 2005.
  • Peter Gow: An Amazonian Myth and Its History (Oxford University Press 2001), ISBN 0-19-924195-3 / ISBN 0-19-924196-1.
  • Colin Clarke: Class, Ethnicity, and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca's Peasentries (Oxford University Press 2001), ISBN 0-19-823387-6.[11]
  • Arthur Bonner: We Will Not Be Stopped: Evangelical Persecution, Catholicism, and Zapatismo in Chiapas, Mexico (Universal Publishers 1999), ISBN 1-58112-864-9.
  • Edward L. Cleary, Timothy J. Steigenga: Resurgent Voice in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change (Rutgers University Press 2004), ISBN 0-8135-3461-5.
  • David Stoll: Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America. A US Evangelical Mission in the Third World (London, Zed Press 1983), ISBN 0-86232-111-5. Criticism of SIL missionary activities.
  • Norman Lewis: The Missionaries (London, Secker and Warburg 1988; McGraw-Hill Companies 1989), ISBN 0-07-037613-1.
  • Richard Pettifer, Julian Bradley: Missionaries (BBC Publications 1991), ISBN 0-563-20702-7.
  • Deborah J. Yashar: Contesting Citizenship In Latin America. The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (Cambridge University Press 2005), ISBN 0-521-82746-9.
  • Castro Mantilla, Maria Dolores: El Trabajo del ILV en Bolivia, 1954—1980, Informe Final (The Work of SIL in Bolivia, 1954-1980, Final Report; La Paz, Ministerio de Desarollo Humano 1996). This report in Spanish contains a detailed chart of SIL activities in Latin American countries.
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