Language Endangerment and Language Maintenance, and: Language Death and Language Maintenance: Theoretical, Practical and Descriptive Approaches (review)

Language ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 965-974 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lenore A. Grenoble ◽  
Lindsay J. Whaley
Keyword(s):  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Language Endangerment

scholarly journals PERGESERAN BAHASA SEBAGAI DAMPAK SIKAP BAHASA

Diksi ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwiyani Pratiwi
Keyword(s):  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Language Attitude ◽  
The Government

impacts on the development of the languages used by the community concerned.One of the impacts is language shift. Factors that are conducive to language shiftare varied. One of these factors is language attitude. This article discusses a furtherimpact that language shift itself can in turn cause, i.e., language death, its process,and the efforts made by individuals, social groups, and the government in authorityto maintain the existence of a language, which implies language maintenance.Keywords: language shift, language maintenance

Language Ecologies: Ethics, Community, and Digital Affect

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hsy
Keyword(s):  
Language Loss ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Language Endangerment

The global linguasphere is in a state of ecological and humanitarian crisis. In a powerful meditation in pmla, simon gikandi notes that the loss of any language (and of a culture sustained by it) is worthy of mourning and that language death around the globe is a matter of urgent collective concern. Relating great emotion when the “UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger confronted me with the bleak reality of language endangerment measured in maps, graphs, and data sets,” he ponders the ethical and political stakes of widespread language loss (9). He ends by quoting (and translating) a poem by the anthropologist Miguel León-Portilla “captur[ing] what happens when a language dies” (13), and he builds to a stark closing dictum: “Letting a language die is an injustice, a denial of will to those who speak it” (14). In this forceful essay, metaphorical discourse of language death gives way to a poignant elegy that registers a strong affective and political investment in the sustainment of languages.

scholarly journals Two key concepts of language endangerment : language obsolescence and language death

Linguistica ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Swiggers
Keyword(s):  
Accurate Information ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Language Endangerment ◽  
Linguistic Rights ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Major Loss ◽  
Coherent Frame

In the contemporary context of world-wide language endangerment, of linguistic imperialism and regression of minority languages, it is of vital importance to take initiatives for the maintenance and protection of linguistic biodiversity.  Languages that become extinct are a major loss, not only for the communities concerned but also for humanity in general. The role of linguists should not be confined to documentation and recording of threatened languages, but should be extended to policies  aimed at the revitalization of languages in the process of obsolescence and extinction, and to programs for stimulating language awareness and language cult. Although practical work and immediate political interventions remain the most urgent tasks, there is also need for a theoretical discussion on the value of language maintenance and preservation. It is important to define adequately the basic concepts to be used in discussions, as well as in scholarly and "bureaucratic" writings in the field of language endangerment. The aim of the present paper has been to clarify the concepts of 'language obsolescence' and 'language death', with an eye at offering a general characterization and typology of both phenomena. Accurate information on the causes and contextual factors involved in language obsolescence and language death can help to elaborate a theoretically coherent frame for construing open-minded language policies and for arousing a widespread feeling of respect for the linguistic rights of speech communities, however small and unprotected they may be.

scholarly journals Metaphors of language: the Vepsian ecology challenges an international paradigm

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-137
Author(s):  
Laura Siragusa
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Language Endangerment ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
The Republic ◽  
North Western

At present Veps, a Finno-Ugric minority in north-western Russia, live in three different administrative regions, i.e., the Republic of Karelia, and the Leningrad and Vologda Oblasts. Due to several socio-economic and political factors Veps have experienced a drastic change in their communicative practices and ways of speaking in the last century. Indeed, Vepsian heritage language is now classified as severely endangered by UNESCO. Since perestroika a group of Vepsian activists working in Petrozavodsk (Republic of Karelia) has been promoting Vepsian language and culture. This paper aims to challenge an international rhetoric around language endangerment and language death through an analysis of Vepsian language ecology and revitalisation. Vepsian ontologies and communicative practices do not always match detached metaphors of language, which view them as separate entities and often in competition with each other. The efforts to promote the language and how these are discussed among the policy-makers and Vepsian activists also do not concur with such a drastic terminology as death and endangerment. Therefore, this paper aims to bring to the surface local ontologies and worldviews in order to query the paradigms around language shift and language death that dominate worldwide academic and political discourse.

Language Shift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lenore A. Grenoble
Keyword(s):  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
Language Attrition ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
Language Endangerment ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual

Language shift occurs when a community of users replaces one language by another, or “shifts” to that other language. Although language shift can and does occur at the level of the individual speaker, it is shift at the level of an entire community that is associated with widespread language replacement and loss. Shift is a particular kind of language loss, and differs from language attrition, which involves the loss of a language over an individual’s lifetime, often the result of aging or of language replacement (as in shift). Both language shift and attrition are in contrast to language maintenance, the continuing use of a language. Language maintenance and revitalization programs are responses to language shift, and are undertaken by communites who perceive that their language is threatened by a decrease in usage and under threat of loss. Language shift is widespread and can be found with majority- or minority-language populations. It is often associated with immigrant groups who take up the majority language of their new territory, leaving behind the language of their homeland. For minority-language speaker communities, language shift is generally the result of a combination of factors, in particular colonization. A nexus of factors—historical, political, social, and economic—often provides the impetus for a community to ceasing speaking their ancestral language, replacing it with the language of the majority, and usually politically dominant, group. Language shift is thus a social issue, and often coupled with other indicators of social distress. Language endangerment is the result of language shift, and in fact shift is its most widespread cause.Since the 1960s there has been ever-increasing interest across speaker communities and linguists to work to provide opportunities to learn and use minority languages to offset shift, and to document speakers in communities under the threat of shift.

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