Lenore Grenoble
Lenore Grenoble
John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics
University of Chicago
Research Project
Linguistic Futures: Language Shift and Revitalization in Rethinking (Socio)linguistic Theory
Project Team:
2025 – 2027
Illustration by Ryan Witter
Key Question
What are the theoretical implications of recent efforts to revitalize endangered languages?
Project Summary
Recent efforts to revitalize endangered languages have created the opportunity to advance linguistic scholarship. Mobilizing new evidence alongside current and emerging methods, this project will position shifting languages at the center of sociolinguistic theory in order to rethink some of its core questions.
Recent decades of political activism to revitalize endangered languages have created linguistic change, and a new linguistic future. These developments challenge mainstream (socio)linguistic theory, which has long sidelined languages that undergo shift as showing mere “deficit,” decay, and irregularity. Our goal is to mobilize this new evidence, paired with current and new methods, to put shifting languages at the center of (socio)linguistic theory and thereby rethink some of its core questions, specifically: the nature of language community and its boundedness; complexity in language change; regularity in social meaning; the category of “native speaker.” We aim to develop these issues in a collaborative project that brings together twenty scholars who study shifting languages and their contexts. In two seminars over two years, with papers rewritten in between, we aim for a volume of linked, theoretically integrative essays.
Topics
Research Team
Susan Gal
Susan Gal
Mae and Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics
University of Chicago
Jonathan Kasstan
Project Narrative
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Chicago Workshop
Chicago Workshop
At this workshop, an international group of 20 scholars shared a wide range of case studies and theoretical insights, challenging long-held assumptions about the meanings of language endangerment.
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Chicago Workshop
Chicago Workshop
At this workshop, an international group of 20 scholars shared a wide range of case studies and theoretical insights, challenging long-held assumptions about the meanings of language endangerment.
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