Language Dynamics in Society

Three members of the Language Sciences Institute have collaborated with scholars in Ireland and Canada to produce a new analytical framework of Language Dynamics in Society. Their paper, recently published in the open access Journal of Ethnic Studies, proposes new approaches to Language Policy and Planning and Ethnolinguistic Vitality.

The team writes:

"In this article, we propose a new analytical framework of Ethnolinguistic Vitality (EV). We term this framework Language Dynamics in Society, abbreviated as LanDS. It represents a significant reappraisal of current approaches to Language Policy and Planning (LPP), including a critique of societal and scientific limitations in those approaches. We present a comprehensive revision of Fishman’s and others’ revitalisation and EV frameworks. LanDS improves on (E)GIDS and other analyses by offering a more holistic framework. It incorporates individual, social and societal developmental realities crucial to sustainable EV in the modern world and its globalising contexts. These realities are presented within logical dynamics, indicating the level and complexity of these interrelated processes that support the intergenerational, i.e. circular, sustainability of language groups. The analysis highlights in particular four core processes, presented as Developmental Quadrants in the overall intergenerational cycle. These Quadrants are contextualised by four General Tenets of EV. From a minority EV point of view, the successful application of the Developmental Quadrants and General Tenets in the LanDS model would realise an individual and societal virtuous cycle for minority LPP.

LanDS posits four analytical Developmental Quadrants: Language Transmission and Acquisition; Socialisation and Reinforced Acquisition; Civic Expansion; and Coherent Ethnicisation. Furthermore, each Quadrant is affected by the General Tenets: Direction; Process; Participation and Competition.

From the LanDS dynamic perspective, EV ensues from the collective and organisational capacity of a language group to protect and regenerate key intergenerational, communal, social, institutional and civic processes. Societal continuity of a language minority is a consequence of their individual and communal actions, attitudes and ambitions, which may be reinforced by their socio-political organisational and economic competences, as well as relevant institutional provisions.

The analytic ambition of LanDS is to help address the challenges of linguistic realities and to better inform scientific approaches which might sustain the social dynamics underpinning language groups and ethnolinguistic diversity."

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/tdjes-2025-0002