Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Multilingual Matters 76

This book is about the theory and practice of assistance to speech-communities whose native languages are threatened because their intergenerational continuity is proceeding negatively, with fewer and fewer speakers (or readers, writers and even understanders) every generation. In the main, this book is about why most efforts to reverse language shift are only indifferently successful at best, and outright failures or even contra-indicated and harmful undertakings at worst. It attempts to diagnose such difficulties and to prescribe ameliorative and restorative efforts in a sociolinguistically informed way. It draws upon the experience of past and current practitioners of language restoration, it reviews pertinent sociolinguistic research and theory, it examines a fairly large number of cases of attempted reversals of language shift on several continents, and it seeks to suggest a more rational, systematic approach to what has often hitherto been a primarily emotion-laden, "let's try everything we possibly can and perhaps something will work", type of dedication. On the basis of detailed analyses of 10 threatened language-in-society constellations and three formerly endangered but now secure constellations, this book develops a closely argued theory of worldwide efforts on behalf of reversing language shift (RLS). It also applies this same line of reasoning to the problems of maintaining the intergenerational continuity of second languages, ethnic heritage languages, and classical religious languages. The book is divided into three sections and 14 chapters. Part one, "Language Shift and Reversing Language Shift: Introductory Considerations," includes four chapters: "What This Book Is About and Why It Is Needed"; "Why Try to Reverse Language Shift and Is It Really Possible To Do So?"; "Where and Why Does Language Shift Occur and How Can It Be Reversed? Locating language Shift in Social Space and Societal Dynamics"; "How Threatened Is Threatened? A Typology of Disadvantaged Languages and the Ameliorative Priorities." Part two, "Case Studies: A Baker's Dozen From Several Continents," has six chapters: "Irish: What More Can Be Done?"; "The Cases of Basque and Frisian"; "Four American Examples: Navajo, Spanish, and Yiddish (Secular and Ultra-Orthodox)"; "Maori: The Native Language of New Zealand"; "Prospects for Reversing Language Shift in Australia: Evidence From Its Aboriginal and Immigrant Languages"; "Three Success Stories (More or Less): Modern Hebrew, French in Quebec and Catalan in Spain." Part three, "Related Issues and Recapitulation," includes four chapters: "On RLS-Focused Planning and on Dialect-Standard Issues and Corpus Planning in Particular"; "The Intergenerational Transmission of 'Additional' Languages for Special Purposes"; "Limitations on School Effectiveness in Connection with Mother Tongue Transmission"; "Theoretical Recapitulation: What Is Reversing Language Shift (RLS) and How Can It Succeed?" (Contains 775 references.) (KFT) This superbly organised presentation consists of four introductory theoretical chapters dealing with the why, what and how of RLS, six chapters devoted to 13 separate cases from various parts of the world and four concluding chapters that both restate the underlying theory as well as apply it more broadly, beyond the mother tongue transmission nexus, to second language for which intergenerational continuity is pursued precisely as second languages. This book consists of theoretical chapters dealing with the why, what and how of RLS, chapters devoted to 13 separate cases from various parts of the world and concluding chapters that both restate and apply the underlying theory to second language for which intergenerational continuity is pursued precisely as second languages.