Ecological Perspectives on Language Endangerment and Loss

Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service professor in the Departments of Linguistics and of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, at the University of Chicago. His research area is evolutionary linguistics focused as much on the phylogenetic emergence of language as on the differential evolution of modern languages in colonial and post-colonial contact ecologies, including the birth of new language varieties as well as the spread of some, the endangerment or loss of some others, and the resilience of some minority languages. His approach is inspired by macroecology and population genetics. He is the author and editor of several books and hundreds of other essays.

• 1. What is a language?.- 2. The meaning of language endangerment and loss.- 3. A history of the world from the point of view of language vitality.- 4. Language diversification vs. language loss.- 5. Education in mother tongue but not necessarily in one’s heritage language.