The Last Language on Earth Linguistic Utopianism in the Philippines

Through written and oral accounts, Eskaya people have represented their language as an ancestral creation derived from a human body. Reinforcing this traditional view, Piers Kelly's linguistic analysis shows how a complex new register was brought into being by fusing new vocabulary onto a modified local grammar. In a synthesis of linguistic, ethnographic, and historical evidence, a picture emerges of a coastal community that fled the ravages of the U.S. invasion of the island in 1901 in order to build a utopian society in the hills. Here they predicted that the world's languages would decline leaving Eskayan as the last language on earth. Marshalling anthropological theories of nationalism, authenticity, and language ideology, along with comparisons to similar events across highland Southeast Asia, Kelly offers a convincing account of this linguistic mystery and also shows its broader relevance to linguistic anthropology. Although the Eskayan situation is unusual, it has the power to illuminate the pivotal role that language plays in the pursuit of identity-building and political resistance.
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