Multilinguality, Vitality, and Endangerment

Insights from the Lived Experiences of Multilingual India

R Karthick Narayanan (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

194 Seiten

2025 | Unabridged edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-0364-5464-7 (ISBN)

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Languages are not simply lost: they are displaced by historical, economic, and political forces. Yet dominant models for assessing language vitality often fail to account for the resilience and adaptability of multilingual communities. This book challenges these conventional narratives by offering a rich, ethnographic exploration of the Toda and Kota communities of the Nilgiris.Through extensive fieldwork, this book reveals why Toda is experiencing rapid decline while Kota remains resilient, demonstrating that language endangerment is not an inevitable outcome of modernization, but rather a consequence of systemic marginalization. Moving beyond current language vitality frameworks, it proposes a language ecology perspective; one that acknowledges multilingualism as a sustainable norm and highlights the structural inequalities driving linguistic displacement.By bridging sociolinguistics, Indigenous studies, and language policy, this book provides fresh insights into oral traditions, power structures, and speaker agency. Essential for linguists, policymakers, and language rights advocates, it redefines how we assess linguistic survival, advocating for a more just and context-sensitive approach to sustaining linguistic diversity in India and beyond.

R. Karthick Narayanan, a Moturi Satyanarayana Fellow, is a linguist and researcher specializing in language documentation, sociolinguistics, language technology and digital archiving. His works focus on the intersection of multilingualism, language endangerment and digital technologies in India. He has conducted extensive fieldwork among Indigenous and minoritized language communities, particularly in the Nilgiri Hills and the eastern Himalayas. His research explores the socio-historical dimensions of language endangerment and revitalization, with a strong commitment to community-driven linguistic documentation and language technology development.Karthick is currently involved in designing linguistic archives, developing linguistic datasets for Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, and training indigenous communities in language documentation practices. His previous publications include works on Toda verbal art and language archiving. He is currently the Chief Community and Data Officer at UnReaL TecE LLP and continues to contribute to research and advocacy for linguistic diversity.

Erscheinungsdatum	04.10.2025
Verlagsort	Newcastle upon Tyne
Sprache	englisch
Maße	148 x 212 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-0364-5464-9 / 1036454649
ISBN-13	978-1-0364-5464-7 / 9781036454647
Zustand	Neuware