Written not only for linguists and anthropologists, this book serves as a general reference guide to language revitalization for language activists and community members who believe they should ensure the future use of their languages, despite their predicted loss. Drawing extensively on case studies, it highlights the necessary background and central issues such as literacy, policy decisions, and allocation of resources. The volume's primary goal is to provide the essential tools for a successful language revitalization program, setting and achieving realistic goals, and anticipating and...

The issue of language loss is currently the focus of much linguistic research. This edited volume brings together work by theoretical linguists, field linguists and nonlinguist members of minority communities to provide an integrated view of how language is lost, from sociological and economic as well as from linguistic perspectives. It maps out some of the strategies applied by native communities and professional linguists in the face of language endangerment. Several authors address the understudied issue of what (beyond a linguistic system) is lost when a language becomes obsolescent.

Written not only for linguists and anthropologists, this book serves as a general reference guide to language revitalization for language activists and community members who believe they should ensure the future use of their languages, despite their predicted loss. Drawing extensively on case studies, it highlights the necessary background and central issues such as literacy, policy decisions, and allocation of resources. The volume's primary goal is to provide the essential tools for a successful language revitalization program, setting and achieving realistic goals, and anticipating and...

Soviet language policy provides rich material for the study of the impact of policy on language use. Moreover, it offers a unique vantage point on the tie between language and culture. While linguists and ethnographers grapple with defining the relationship of language to culture, or of language and culture to identity, the Soviets knew that language is an integral and inalienable part of culture. The former Soviet Union provides an ideal case study for examining these relationships, in that it had one of the most deliberate language policies of any nation state. This is not to say that it...

The issue of language loss is currently the focus of much linguistic research. This edited volume brings together work by theoretical linguists, field linguists and nonlinguist members of minority communities to provide an integrated view of how language is lost, from sociological and economic as well as from linguistic perspectives. It maps out some of the strategies applied by native communities and professional linguists in the face of language endangerment. Several authors address the understudied issue of what (beyond a linguistic system) is lost when a language becomes obsolescent.