Endangered languages documentation: from standardization to mobilization

Currently, the main arena for computer-based linguistic contribution towards endangered languages is in data encoding and standardization. This phase urgently needs to be complemented by a period of working out how to deliver computer-based language support to endangered language communities. Established linguistic practice has neither sufficiently documented nor strengthened endangered languages; Himmelmann (1998) identified this problem and proposed a new discipline he called documentary linguistics. Although this emerging discipline has stimulated digital projects for data standardisation, encoding, and archiving, it lacks two vital aspects: a methodology that provides roles for community members, and new genres of dissemination. Without identifying new ways to mobilize the products of documentation, documentary linguistics will remain indistinguishable from its predecessors in its ability to support language communities.