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

1. Introduction

To say that the topics of language endangerment, maintenance, and revitalization have become mainstream in linguistics is to overstate matters, but not by much. Granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities have stated their intent to fund work that specifically deals with the archiving, description, or analysis of endangered languages; conferences routinely include sessions devoted to some aspect of declining linguistic diversity; and a steady stream of publications on language endangerment has emerged from the trickle of work on the topic just a couple of decades ago; in just the last five years alone no fewer than fifteen book-length treatments of language death and revitalization have appeared, including the two books under discussion in this review.

Language endangerment and language maintenance (LELM) and Language death and language maintenance (LDLM) both stem from symposia in which scholars gathered to reflect on a variety of issues surrounding language endangerment, though both volumes also contain papers not presented at those meetings. In many respects, LELM and LDLM cover very familiar ground for those who have kept abreast of the literature on the loss of languages and attempts to reclaim their use. The typical article surveys the current vitality of a language or group of languages, indicates the mix of sociohistorical variables that have led to a decrease in the use of the language(s), and describes the efforts being made, if any, to halt the decline of the existing speaker base. The conclusions generally affirm what is already well understood about why languages become endangered, and there are few novel statements offered about the effectiveness of one type of maintenance program versus any other.

Despite the obvious resemblances to the existing body of literature, LELM and LDLM are helpful in drawing attention to regions of the world that are often underrepresented in overviews of language endangerment and maintenance. LELM, though global in scope, has a bias towards the southern Pacific region. LDLM has Eurasia as its geographic center, with forays into Africa and the Pacific islands. One felicitous outcome is that both books highlight the fact that the globe is not homogenous with respect to the causes of language endangerment; rather, particular regions and particular communities have unique features that resist a one-size-fits-all model of declining linguistic diversity.

Perhaps more significantly, LELM and LDLM, when taken in their entirety, and even more so when taken together, point to certain issues that may be of special import for understanding the long-term success of language maintenance/revitalization programs: globalization, multilingualism, literacy, and the role of the outsider in working with speakers of endangered languages. These issues are mentioned repeatedly in LELM and LDLM as individual authors grapple with questions about the prospects of language maintenance, yet with very few exceptions, the issues are not examined critically. The globalization of English is asserted, for example (LELM, xii), but nowhere in the volumes do we find a discussion of whether this is inevitable or whether it is contingent upon the continuity of certain economic, cultural, and/or political patterns that currently hold sway in the world. Similarly, we read that ‘literacy programs and mother tongue education are of course essential [to language maintenance and revitalization]’ (LDLM, xiii), yet do not find any commentary alerting us to the fact that there is contentious debate as to what literacy is in the first place. Consequently, the articles of LELM and LDLM provide helpful and significant information about the current and future vitality of languages around the world, and also suggest the directions that future scholarship should...