Counting the losses: numbers as the language of language endangerment

Authors

  • Robert E Moore Dublin City University Author
  • Sari Pietikäinen University of Jyväskylä Author
  • Jan Blommaert University of Jyväskylä, University of Tilburg Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v4i1.1

Keywords:

Language endangerment and shift, minority and indigenous languages, Sámi, African and Native American languages, globalization

Abstract

This paper provides a set of critical reflections on the use(s) of numbers to communicate facts about the changing dynamics of speech communities undergoing language shift. Such numerical representations are widespread, and they are of important in segments of language expertise. After a literature survey of counting practices, the paper focuses on three language-ideological decisions underpinning language counting: First, decisions need to be made as to who counts as a speaker. In discussions of language endangerment, speaker counts are the most important single index of the endangered character of the language. Secondly, in order to count the number of distinct languages in a region, country, or world area, decisions must be made which privilege a notion of languages as bounded, closed, and geographically fixed entities. Finally, decisions need to be made with respect to the domains in which “small,” endangered, or minority languages continue to be used. From the discussion of domains we develop an alternative vision that centers not on distinct, named, countable languages, but on speakers and repertoires, and on the actual resources that speakers deploy in actual contexts. The contemporary situation of speakers of indigenous Sami, African and Native American languages will be drawn upon for examples.

Author Biographies

  • Robert E Moore, Dublin City University
    Robert E Moore has been engaged since the mid 1980s in ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork on Kiksht (Wasco-Wishram dialect of Upper Chinookan) in Indian reservation communities in the US Pacific Northwest; he is the author of a series of articles on language shift and endangerment, on the semiotics of brands and branding, and on the politics of accent in Irish English, among other topics.
  • Sari Pietikäinen, University of Jyväskylä
    Sari Pietikäinen is a professor in Discourse Studies at the University of Jyväskylä. Her research interest includes language endangerment, peripherial multilingualism and indigenous Sámi community. She has published on these topics and is currently leading an international research project on Northern Multilingualism.
  • Jan Blommaert, University of Jyväskylä, University of Tilburg
    Jan Blommaert is Finland Distinguished Professor of Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and Professor of Language, Culture and Globalisation at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. He is the author of Discourse: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2005), Grassroots Literacy (Routledge 2008) and The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and the editor of Language Ideological Debates (Mouton de Gruyter 1999).

Published

2010-10-06

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Moore, R. E., Pietikäinen, S., & Blommaert, J. (2010). Counting the losses: numbers as the language of language endangerment. Sociolinguistic Studies, 4(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v4i1.1