Language Maintenance

Abstract

Language maintenance involves efforts to maintain an existing language, as opposed to language planning (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics article Language Policy and Planning, which may implement changes to an existing language; language maintenance efforts may also involve some language planning where needed. Language maintenance is usually a response to language shift, which has led at least part of the speaker community to feel that some risk exists to the language’s ongoing use; language maintenance is their action to maintain it. The goal of most language maintenance efforts is usually not to retain all socio-dialectal and stylistic diversity, but rather to focus on some particular “standard” variety. Education is the setting where most language maintenance work occurs, but other types of community efforts are usually also present. These efforts may center on language, but they may also include important territorial, literary, cultural, historical, and other components and may extend into political activism. Where government policy supports cultural and linguistic diversity, competition for recognition and resources for language maintenance usually exists. Whether a language is Indigenous or is not Indigenous may also be relevant: languages that are not Indigenous and that are part of a diaspora community may have contact with and support from other places where the language has higher status and is not undergoing a shift; indigenous minority languages may be seen as having a stronger claim for resources, but they may often have lower status in the wider community. Much of the effort of many linguists in recent years has focused on language endangerment (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics article Endangered Languages, which is a consequence of language shift. Language maintenance for endangered languages is usually called revitalization, though various other terms are also used. The type of revitalization required differs greatly depending on how far the language shift has progressed.