Words from the Director, Professor Wang Liangfan :

Guizhou has been the habitant where many Southern Chinese minorities, including Miao, Dong, Buyi, Shui, Yao, Gelao and so on, live for ages. The sophisticated geographical factors like the mountains and the waters and historical and historical factors allow each minority living on this land to manifest the unique forms and richness of their own culture. If you focus on the details of different nations, tribes, societies and villages, you must be able to find a variety of cultures and cultural differences, which can be described as ‘fainting’.

       Under the trend of globalization, same as many other minorities in the world, the minorities in Guizhou, including Miao, Dong, Buyi and so on, are eager for development. There are tremendous influences from the market economy, industrialization and the modernization on the minority culture in this area. The contemporary history is a big challenge, as well as an opportunity, to the culture of the minorities.

Our institute welcomes visits and cooperation from those who are interested in minority languages and culture, and social development in Guizhou.

Message from the Vice Director, Mr. Wil Snyder:

The Guizhou University Southwest Minorities Language and Culture Research Institute is a joint research venture between Guizhou University and SIL International. SIL and Guizhou University have had many years of fruitful cooperation, and I am very happy to see this relationship further enhanced by the establishment of our joint research institute.

SIL members first came to Guizhou to work in 1991, and my wife, daughter and I arrived at Guizhou University in 1992 to begin researching the Bouyei language and culture. We were welcomed from the beginning, and have been working here since, over ten years now. Guizhou University has been immensely helpful to the various SIL researchers working in Guizhou, helping with many various affairs, from visas and paperwork, to arranging tutors and coordinating research projects. At present, there are over ten SIL researchers at Guizhou University, from several different countries, working in the Bouyei, Dong and Miao languages.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics was first established in 1934 in the United States, and first began to work among the minorities of Mexico, doing linguistic research, literacy, and community development. SIL is now an international organization, with over 5000 members from over 40 countries. SIL is a non-governmental organization, and is at present working in over 70 countries around the world. It has recently been appointed as a language consultant organization to the United Nations.

SIL first began work in Asia in 1953, in the Philippines. SIL's work in the Philippines is nearing completion, as the agreed upon goals of SIL and the Philippine government are almost fulfilled.

The purpose of SIL is to work with language communities worldwide to facilitate language-based development through research, translation and literacy. SIL workers are involved in linguistic research, translation, cultural research, literacy, bilingual education, community development, training language workers, and the development of linguistic software.

SIL strives to cooperate with relevant government entities, universities, the local community, and other non-governmental organizations. SIL does not interfere in any country's internal affairs, and respects the laws of each host country.

The work that SIL engages in is generally very long term. Typically it will involve: learning the national language of the host country, in order to facilitate cooperative work with scholars and government officials; minority language learning, ideally spending significant amounts of time living in minority areas; research in various disciplines related to minority study (for example language survey, phonetics, phonology, grammar, semantics, discourse studies, cultural and anthropological studies, lexical studies, language data collection, etc.). In addition to pure research, SIL is also involved in literacy, bilingual education, the development of language material, and community development.

China is an exciting place for linguistic and cultural studies. The language and cultural environment is often quite complex, and presents innumerable opportunities of research for the interested scholar. We are confident that the  Guizhou University Southwest Minorities Language and Culture Research Institute will have an instrumental part in current and future minority research in China, and extend an invitation to both foreign and Chinese scholars to work with us.

Wil Snyder

SIL International

Assistant Director of the  Guizhou University Southwest Minorities Language and Culture Research Institute