Endangered languages, endangered knowledge

Luisa Maffi

97 citations0/0 files storedInternational Social Science Journal

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Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies Multilingual Education and Policy Language and Culture

Abstract

In the life of languages, change is the rule rather than the exception.Pervasive variation occurs within any given speech community, and speakers in each generation use their language or languages slightly differently from their predecessors, in both unconscious and conscious ways (Stross 1975).Through these processes, languages keep responding and adapting to their users' communication needs (Kay 1977), serving as dynamic bridges between the past and the future and as vehicles for the continued, and continuously innovative, transmission of a community's knowledges, beliefs, values, and practices (Maffi 2001a).Under these normal circumstances, it is accurate to say that languages do not die: they only get transformed.But then, we also know that in some cases languages do die (Crystal 2000, Dixon 1997).That is when, rather than being transformed through use and intergenerational transmission, a given language becomes increasingly restricted in use, and ultimately ceases to be passed on from one generation to the next.In such cases, the flow of communication and transmission is interrupted because speakers voluntarily or unwillingly shift to another, generally dominant, more prestigious, more powerful language and choose not to teach their native language or languages to their children.In extreme but far from rare instances, the breakdown of communication and ISSJ 173/

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References

1992Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages 1992The world's languages in crisis 2013Linguistic Genocide in Education--or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?1997The Rise and Fall of Languages 1971The ecology of language 2001Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing

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