ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses YouTube-hosted Ladino-speaking digital archives. Drawing upon Zuckermann’s conceptualisation of Revivalistics as a field of inquiry that shifts the focus from documentary linguistics to community field linguistics, the chapter features a critical analysis of the YouTube-hosted Ladino digital archives of the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino i su Kultura הרשות הלאומית לתרבות הלאדינו (2011–16), eSefarad CCSefarad, a few Ladino videos from the ‘Jewish Languages’ playlist of Wikitongues, Ladino 21, the ‘Judeo-Spanish Collection’ of Vanishing Languages and Cultural Heritage (VLACH), and the ‘Ladino (Judeo-Spanish)’ playlist of the Endangered Language Alliance. The chapter’s examination focuses on four main themes: (i) revitalisation, (ii) the tension between descriptivism and prescriptivism, (iii) multimodality, postvernacularity, and transvaluation, and (iv) pedagogics and awareness-raising opportunities. This study is interrogated and supplemented by an ethnographic perspective attentive to the broader power struggles that mediate the creation and multimodal, multisemiotic functioning of Ladino digital archives in the 21st century. Lastly, the chapter includes a comparison with two renowned Yiddish counterparts, namely Yiddish Book Center’s (2008 to present) and Forverts’s (2008 to present), as well as the postvernacular content of JEWBELLish.
