Dr Luisa Maf is a linguist, anthropol-

ogist, and ethnobiologist. She is cofoun-

der and President of Terralingua: Partner-
ships for Linguistic and Biological
Diversity. Terralingua is an international
NGO based in Washington, DC, devoted
to supporting the worlds linguistic diver-
sity and to exploring the links between
linguistic, cultural, and biological diver-
sity, through research, information, edu-
cation, and policy. She is editor of On
Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language,
Knowledge, and the Environment (2001).
Email: [email protected]
Endangered languages, endangered
knowledge
Luisa Maf
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 pre-
decessors, in both unconscious and conscious
ways (Stross 1975). Through these processes,
languages keep responding and adapting to their
users communication needs (Kay 1977), serv-
ing as dynamic bridges between the past and
the future and as vehicles
for the continued, and con-
tinuously innovative, trans-
mission of a communitys
knowledges, beliefs, values,
and practices (Maf 2001a).
Under these normal circum-
stances, it is accurate to say
that languages do not die:
they only get transformed.
But then, we also know
that in some cases langu-
ages do die (Crystal 2000,
Dixon 1997). That is when,
rather than being transfor-
med through use and inter-
generational transmission, a given language
becomes increasingly restricted in use, and ulti-
mately ceases to be passed on from one gener-
ation to the next. In such cases, the ow of
communication and transmission is interrupted
because speakers voluntarily or unwillingly shift
to another, generally dominant, more pres-
tigious, 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 173/2002 UNESCO 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
transmission may even be due to decimation of
the speakers because of natural disasters, dis-
ease, war, or genocide.
Both phenomena are known, or can be
inferred, to have occurred throughout the history
of humanity. Yet, while language change has
long been an object of study for linguists (and
in fact can be said to be one of the very roots
of the emergence of the modern discipline of
linguistics in the nineteenth century), language
death is a more recent focus
of attention. Scholarly inter-
est in this issue manifested
itself sporadically from the
late nineteenth century on.
Linguists who had taken up
the study of indigenous and
minority languages some-
times expressed concern for
the future prospects of
these languages and their
speakers in light of ever-
increasing social, political,
and economic change. It
was only during the decade
of the 1990s, though, that
this concern came to a head with a rapid and
exponential rise of interest in the issue (Crystal
2000, Dixon 1997, Dorian 1989, Grenoble and
Whaley 1998, Hale et al. 1992, Robins and
Uhlenbeck 1991). To a large extent, this rise
of interest was due to the accumulation of a
growing mass of data not only on the grammati-
cal and lexical features of the worlds langu-
ages, but also on the state of vitality of the
languages (see e.g., Grimes 2000). From Europe
to the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Asia,
386 Luisa Maf
Africa, the message was the same: the indigen-
ous and minority languages of the world were
disappearing at an alarming and accelerating
rate, replaced by a small number of ever-
expanding, majority languages (referred to as
killer languages in Skutnabb-Kangas 2000).
At the outset, clarion calls about this langu-
age endangerment crisis were issued by linguists
mostly out of a professional preoccupation that
this ongoing language loss projected to thre-
aten the survival of 5090% of the worlds
6800 languages in the next 100 years (Krauss
1992) spelled the impending demise of
linguists very object of study. These scholars
would point out that, in order to adequately
characterise the notion of human language, it
is necessary to have access to the fullest poss-
ible variety of human languages, their sounds,
their ways of expressing grammatical categories
and relations, and so forth. In this case, the
appeal tended to be to the linguistic profession
to refocus its priorities from the elaboration of
abstract models of grammar (based on English
and a few other major, well-described
languages) to the old-fashioned task of doing
linguistic eldwork to describe and document
as much as possible of the worlds endangered
languages, so as to preserve them for posterity.
To outsiders, and particularly to the mem-
bers of indigenous and minority language com-
munities, this initial call to action may have
sounded self-serving for the linguistic pro-
fession. Nevertheless, during the 1990s it
became increasingly recognised within the pro-
fession that the posterity in question should
rst of all include the descendants of the last
uent speakers of these languages, so as to help
maintain or, as the case may be, restore
the life of languages. A small but highly mot-
ivated group of linguists have actually chosen
to put their skills to the service of linguistic
communities seeking to establish language revi-
talisation and language education programmes
(e.g., Hinton 1994). A few non-prot organis-
ations were created to pursue the purposes of
this salvage linguistics (such as the Foun-
dation for Endangered Languages in the UK,
the Endangered Language Fund in the U.S., the
Society for Endangered Languages in Germany,
and the Clearinghouse on Endangered
Languages in Japan). These organisations have
contributed to raising general awareness of the
UNESCO 2002.
language endangerment crisis and to gathering
information and promoting research about
indigenous and minority languages, including
by offering small grants. Some of the recipients
of such grants have been members of language
communities researching their own languages,
and in general grant policies have stressed the
importance to make research data available to
language communities in useful form and have
also invited work aimed at setting up language
maintenance and revitalisation programmes.
International organisations such as UNESCO
also have variously taken on the issue of langu-
age endangerment, such as with the publication
of an atlas of endangered languages (Wurm
1996) and the compilation of Red Books of
endangered languages and of a World Langu-
ages Survey.
At the same time, other reasons for concern
emerged during the 1990s, centred on what
might be lost to the speakers themselves, and
to humanity at large, through the erosion of the
worlds linguistic diversity. The consequences
of linguistic diversity loss began to be discussed
also in terms of human rights, ethics, and social
justice and of maintaining cultural identity and
heritage (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Skutnabb-
Kangas and Phillipson 1994, Thieberger 1990).
Links were suggested between linguistic (and
cultural) diversity and biodiversity as distinct
but mutually supporting manifestations of the
diversity of life on earth (Harmon 1996, Krauss
1996, Maf 2001a, Maf et al. 1999,
Muhlhausler 1996). Research pointed to the
interrelations between language and the environ-
ment, particularly through the mediation of tra-
ditional ecological knowledge, language being
the main repository of and transmission vehicle
for knowledge (Maf 2001a, b). Out of the
coalescence of environmental, cultural, linguis-
tic, and human rights issues an interdisciplinary
eld has arisen that has come to be known as
biocultural diversity. The emergence of this
eld has both given rise to and been promoted
by another non-prot organisation, the inter-
national NGO Terralingua: Partnerships for
Linguistic and Biological Diversity. Terralingua
was created in the mid-1990s with the specic
purpose to support and foster the worlds
linguistic diversity and to explore the links
between linguistic (and cultural) diversity and
biodiversity. Terralinguas work, carried out
387 Endangered languages, endangered knowledge
through a programme of research, information,
education, and policy advocacy, has begun to
call international attention to new approaches
to joint conservation of both natural and cultural
resources (Maf 1998, Maf et al. 1999, Oviedo
et al. 2000, Posey 1999). It has also brought to
the fore the issue of linguistic human rights as
a key aspect of protection and promotion of
linguistic diversity (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000,
Terralingua 1998).
The responses to the linguistic diversity
crisis developed by scholars during the 1990s
and into the twenty-rst century have thus
tended to fall into two categories: those aiming
to document languages and preserve a record
of them in grammars, dictionaries, and texts,
and those aiming to support and promote
linguistic diversity as such, as a key component
of the diversity of life. These two classes of
responses are by no means mutually exclusive,
either in theory or in practice. Both of these
approaches are needed, given the multifaceted
nature of the problem (and proponents of one
approach have generally acknowledged, and
sometimes embraced, the rationale and modus
operandi of the other). What is perhaps even
more needed, though, is the eventual integration
of this variety of efforts into one well
articulated, solidly grounded, and clearly ident-
iable domain at the intersection of research
and practice, in a way somewhat comparable to
what relatively new elds such as conservation
biology and ecosystem health have
accomplished in relation to biodiversity and
ecosystems.
Such a specically dened eld of linguis-
tics, in which the currently dispersed efforts to
confront the language endangerment crisis could
be synergised and concepts, terminologies, and
methodologies could be claried, harmonised,
and strengthened, would probably bestow to this
kind of endeavour the legitimacy and authority
it does not yet possess within linguistics and
it might even signicantly contribute to revi-
talising linguistics as a discipline and conferring
it new relevance within and beyond academia.
Under such a scheme, students would be able
to enter, and train for, an integrated eld of
research and action that would have dened
its own goals, theory, methodology, and whose
legitimacy would be recognised both within aca-
demia (and thus within the academic merit
UNESCO 2002.
system) and outside of it (such as in non-
academic education, especially at the grassroots,
as well as in non-prot service organisations,
and so forth). And the currently bemoaned lack
of funding for work in support of endangered
languages might be more easily overcome
because of both the distinct real world nature
and higher visibility of this eld.
It is interesting to note that one of the rst
books to provide a popular review of the
linguistic diversity crisis, David Crystals Lang-
uage Death (Crystal 2000), advocates something
similar in contemplating top priorities for
action. The name that Crystal suggests for this
eld-to-be is preventive linguistics, based on
an analogy with medical matters. This label
lends itself to ambiguity of interpretation and
may not go down well with many of the poten-
tial members of the eld or potential users of
its results (especially indigenous and minority
language speakers). Alternatively, a label of
conservation linguistics might be suggested,
by analogy with conservation biology, and
following a distinction between preserving (ex
situ, i.e., in books and other material records)
and conserving (in situ, i.e., within the speech
community), as suggested in Maf (2000).
Objections might be raised in this case as well
(e.g., Skutnabb-Kangas 2000: x, footnote 1),
due to earlier negative connotations of the word
conserve the sense in which people associ-
ate it with keeping in a museum or freezing
in time. The point, however, would be to pro-
mote the identication of this word, as referred
to language, with maintain in context and
maintain through continued use and develop-
ment, in a way similar to how the word is
increasingly understood in relation to biodivers-
ity. And the analogy might be pushed even
further, along the lines of the progression from
preservation to conservation to land ethic to
ecosystem health advocated by environmental
philosopher J. Baird Callicott (David Rapport,
pers. comm. 2001). Following this analogy, one
might suggest that the ultimate goal in the case
of languages should be ensuring the health of
linguistic ecologies, or of what has been termed
the logosphere, the web of the worlds langu-
ages (Krauss 1996).
Whatever label might eventually come to
be chosen for such a eld, it may be useful to
review what the eld would need to accomplish
388 Luisa Maf
in order to advance the integration of scholar-
ship concerned with language endangerment and
linguistic diversity and to promote its relevance
to policy and applied work. Several similar
points are made by Crystal (2000). First of all,
an emerging eld of conservation linguistics
(if for convenience we choose to use this term
here) should, of course, develop its own theor-
etical perspective. As Crystal notes, at this time
there is not even a coherent terminology to
refer to the phenomena involved in the loss of
linguistic diversity (language endangerment,
language obsolescence, language death, and
so forth). It should also be recognised that such
terminology is not ideologically neutral, and
that some might prefer to make explicit refer-
ence to the agency behind, say, language
death, and speak instead of language murder
(Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). We also need to
dene what exactly we mean by linguistic
diversity to begin with: just language rich-
ness, or do rarity and endemism play a role
too, as they do in the denition of biodiversity
along with species richness? What else may
be involved? At the theoretical level, other
issues to be addressed include identifying the
specic structural and functional changes in a
language that allow us to conclude that the
language is becoming obsolescent rather than
undergoing normal change (Hill 2001); the
range of known circumstances that lead to lang-
uage loss and shift to dominant languages; and
the conditions under which one can say that a
language has become endangered, obsol-
escent, or dead. In all instances, the appro-
priate conceptual vocabulary and methodology
need to be elaborated on the basis of a solid
typology of the relevant phenomena. Although
concerned linguists may feel as if it is a drop
in the bucket, much work has already been done
on situations of language loss and language shift
around the world. This scholarship needs to be
brought together in a comparative and synthetic
fashion. We may discover that we actually
know more than we thought and we would
certainly also discover where the gaps are.
As Crystal (2000) also points out, having
a well-developed theoretical framework is
essential to guide the task of gathering infor-
mation about, and assessing and monitoring, the
state of the worlds languages. To evaluate the
current conditions and future prospects of a lan-
UNESCO 2002.
guage, it is not enough to just know the sheer
number of speakers of the language at a given
time; it is also necessary to have details about
trends in the number of speakers over time,
and to correlate these with speaker population
demographics, sociolinguistic factors, socio-
political and economic context, and so forth.
This approach is analogous to that taken in
assessments of biodiversity or the state of the
worlds ecosystems, which commonly seek to
determine current conditions, threats and trends,
and future prospects (as well as response
options, on which more below). In turn, also by
analogy with biodiversity, monitoring of global
trends in linguistic diversity would benet from
the development of indexes measuring the
vitality and continuity of the worlds languages,
thus allowing for the identication of long-term
trends in lieu of the current sketchy data and
off-the-cuff projections.
Furthermore, referring to the work of Ter-
ralingua, Crystal argues that the links with ecol-
ogy are not just metaphorical or only pertaining
to the ecology of languages per se (Haugen
1972, Muhlhausler 1996). This and other work,
especially by ethnobiologists and ethnoecolog-
ists, suggests that linguistic ecologies and bio-
logical ecologies are mutually related through
human knowledge, use, and management of the
environment and through the languages used
to convey this knowledge and practices (Maf
2001a, Oviedo et al. 2000). This two-way
relationship needs to be brought out and studied
in depth. It is generally agreed upon that small-
scale societies with a history of continued and
unchallenged occupation of given territories will
over time tend to develop and maintain detailed
and accurate knowledge about their ecological
niches, as well as about sustainable ways of
extracting and managing natural resources.
Their ways of speaking, oral traditions, and ver-
bal art forms will transmit this knowledge. His-
torically, cases in which a dynamic balance
between humans and the environment on which
they depend has not been sustained are largely
linked to the rise of complex civilisations, living
and expanding their dominant reach beyond the
connes of local ecosystems. By and large, this
has happened to the detriment of indigenous
and other local societies, whose control over
their lands and resources and freedom to prac-
tice their ways of life and use their languages
389 Endangered languages, endangered knowledge
A bush school in Mali. J.-L. Manaud/Hoa-Qui
UNESCO 2002.
390 Luisa Maf
have been undermined or taken away. (See ref-
erences in Oviedo et al. 2000, Skutnabb-Kangas
2000, and Maf 2001a.) Although we need a
better understanding of the nature and extent of
the links between language and knowledge or
language and culture, initial evidence suggests
that losing ones heritage language(s) often
implies losing the knowledges, beliefs, values,
and practices that the language(s) encode(s) and
convey(s) (Zent 2001).
On these grounds, it then makes sense to
entertain the goal of assessing and monitoring
the state of biological and linguistic (and more
broadly cultural) diversity in an integrated
fashion. A project for a Global Biocultural
Diversity Assessment, recently set up by Terra-
lingua, proposes to do just that, in connection
with major environmental assessments such as
the current international effort known as Millen-
nium Ecosystem Assessment. It can be expected
that this kind of interdisciplinary work, predi-
cated on close collaboration between natural and
social scientists (and on training of a new
generation of scientists with interdisciplinary
skills), will yield a much more sophisticated
understanding of the complex and interlinked
phenomena that affect the various manifes-
tations of the diversity of life, and that it will
provide more effective tools for action geared
to the elaboration of policy and other response
options to the diversity crisis.
This is not to say that a considerable
amount of work has not already been done in
terms of policy and other responses to the crisis.
Such work concerns especially, on the one
hand, the formulation of linguistic human rights,
including linguistic rights in education, and the
protection thereof; and, on the other, the
development of a wide variety of language
maintenance and revitalisation programmes and
projects around the world. (For reviews, see
Fishman 1991, 2000, Hinton and Hale 2001,
Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Skutnabb-Kangas and
Phillipson 1994). Yet, linguistic human rights
continue to be violated or at least not enforced
all over the world, and language communities
continue to struggle to establish and sustain
language programmes, often with little or no
outside help when such programmes do not
encounter resistance or outright opposition.
Here, too, there is an urgent need to globally
assess the state of affairs and identify the gaps.
UNESCO 2002.
In relation to linguistic human rights, per-
haps the main gap at the international level is
the lack of an established framework for the
protection of such rights. Although a Draft Uni-
versal Declaration of Linguistic Rights was sub-
mitted to UNESCO in 1996, it has not fared
well in terms of approval by this agency; nor
have alternative processes emerged to address
this need. In some cases, regional policies (such
as the European Charter on Regional and Min-
ority Languages, adopted in 1992 and signed
by an increasing number of European countries
since) appear to have made greater strides.
However, the ultimate litmus test lies in
country-level policies, and at this level the
available data suggest that the picture world-
wide is not good. By and large, individual coun-
tries at best pay lip service to linguistic human
rights but do not adequately implement them
particularly in terms of providing opportunities
for education in indigenous and minority langu-
ages or they apply benign neglect; at worst,
they actively suppress these rights (Skutnabb-
Kangas 2000). As concerns indigenous and min-
ority language support programmes in general,
countries rarely take an active and constructive
role in accepting and promoting linguistic diver-
sity in their midst. Rather, they tend to push
for monolingualism in the national languages,
putting forth misguided arguments, such as that
multilingualism threatens national unity or that
language programmes are too costly (Skutnabb-
Kangas 2000).
It is to the country level, therefore, that
much of the focus of language-related policy
action needs to turn, taking into account the
local political, economic, and social realities,
while at the same time not losing sight of the
global perspective on issues of linguistic diver-
sity and language endangerment. One can only
illuminate and strengthen the other. The same
can be said in relation to language maintenance
and revitalisation programmes and projects.
Global (or even regional) reviews of what has
been and is being done will be extremely useful
in providing a typology of this kind of
responses, and in suggesting what works (or
does not work) where and under what circum-
stances. On the other hand, the pressure needs
to be on national governments and other dom-
estic institutions to devise or support, and fund,
such policies, programmes, and projects.
391 Endangered languages, endangered knowledge
In connection to response options, it is thus
evident that a major task for those concerned
with the fate of the worlds linguistic diversity
continues to be one of raising, and in fact main-
taining a high level of, public awareness and
attention to this issue. Creating a climate that
will induce governments and other relevant
administrations to develop adequate language
policies, language education programmes, and
so forth has as one of its preconditions a well-
informed public: a public favourable to linguis-
tic diversity as a benet for the health and
vitality of both human societies and ecosystems
rather than suspicious of it as a potential or
actual threat to societal cohesiveness and stab-
ility. Achieving this aim will require a major
creative effort on the part of all concerned.
Linguists, in particular, will need to focus on
fully developing and communicating innovative
concepts such as the logosphere (Krauss
1996), linguistic ecologies (Muhlhausler
1996), languages as resources (Maf 1998),
and maybe even linguistic services
(analogous, and perhaps linked, to the ecosys-
tem services provided by Earths ecosystems).
A climate of public awareness is also one
precondition for calling the attention of funding
institutions, that so far have hardly taken langu-
age issues into account (with the obvious excep-
tion of research foundations in which case,
however, the focus has traditionally been on
linguistic theory rather than language descrip-
tion or applied linguistics, let alone language
policies). Initial signs of change are currently
visible in this domain, as a consequence of the
growing awareness of the linguistic diversity
crisis that developed during the 1990s. Among
research foundations, the US National Science
Foundation has started a line of funding for
description of endangered languages. Major
private foundations such as the Ford Foun-
dation, MacArthur Foundation, and Volks-
Wagen Foundation have begun to offer funding
for work on endangered languages, language
maintenance, and language policy. It is essential
to keep this momentum so that such lines of
UNESCO 2002.
funding will become well established and
increasingly adopted by other funding agencies.
Still, those who care about the loss of
linguistic diversity, as a part of the diversity of
life, themselves often feel at a loss when it
comes to making others care. In the face of the
crisis, the message hardly seems to get out fast
enough, far enough, wide enough, convincingly
enough. For each small victory noted, there
always seem to be so many more defeats,
whether in terms of deaths of last uent speak-
ers of given languages, suppression of linguistic
human rights, abolition or failed implementation
of language education policies, and so forth.
Whatever hard-won progress there may be, it
never appears to be immune from being drasti-
cally reversed. The approach advocated here, as
a necessary step, is one in which science (both
social and natural), information, education, pol-
icy, advocacy, applied work, all join hands and
support one another to face the crisis.
But this is not all. This is a necessary, yet
not a sufcient step. These elds speak to the
rational in us, but we also need to appeal to
peoples emotions and sense of aesthetics. Lan-
guage and languages are not only useful tools;
they are also a thing of beauty, and the loss of
the many voices of human language is also a
tremendous loss of beauty. To convey this
message, we need art too. Thats undoubtedly
why so many writers, and so many scientists
turned writers, have been pouring a growing
ow of ink into crafting impassioned medi-
tations and personal accounts about the loss,
about its impact on the human spirit, on the
human species, on life as we know it. We need
more of this wordsmiths (and why not, as
Crystal suggests, also visual artists and
musicians) who will speak not just to our minds
but to our hearts and souls. Science and art can
also join hands to shake us, move us, inspire us
away from short-sighted destructive behaviours,
point us toward a more sustainable future in which
the diversity of life can again fully thrive and be
cherished, for the physical, cultural, and spiritual
well-being of present and future generations.
392 Luisa Maf
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