Repurposing archival audio materials for language revitalisation in an Aboriginal community

The digital revolution has provided a wealth of resources and opportunities for those interested in learning an additional language. Unfortunately this does not apply to many of the world’s languages, especially those with smaller speech communities, such as Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. On the other hand documentation of these languages, often dating back many years, has left a rich legacy of materials with the potential to provide language learning opportunities. In this paper we outline a research project undertaken with the Jilkminggan community to investigate the repurposing of archival audio recordings for language learning and resource creation through the use of Chunkbank, a repository of communicatively useful utterances derived from existing audio recordings. Using a framework based on the concept of scaffolding we show how the Mangarrayi utterances and the organisational framework of Chunkbank provide scaffolding to support comprehension and use of the utterances for language learning and resource creation.