Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Today, indigenous communities throughout North America are grappling with the dual issues of language loss and revitalization. While many communities are making efforts to bring their traditional languages back through educational programs, for some communities these efforts are not enough or have come too late to stem the tide of language death, which occurs when there are no remaining fluent speakers and the language is no longer used in regular communication. The Maliseet language, as spoken in the Tobique First Nation of New Brunswick, Canada, is one such endangered language that will either be revitalized and survive or will die off. Defying Maliseet Language Death is an ethnographic study by Bernard C. Perley, a member of this First Nation, that examines the role of the Maliseet language and its survival in Maliseet identity processes. Perley examines what is being done to keep the Maliseet language alive, who is actively involved in these processes, and how these two factors combine to promote Maliseet language survival. He also explores questions of identity, asking the important question: ?If Maliseet is no longer spoken, are we still Maliseet?? This timely volume joins the dual issues of language survival and indigenous identity to present a unique perspective on the place of language within culture.

Drawing on--but also extending--the theories and methods of applied linguistics, this book demonstrates how scholars of language might work together and with non-language specialists to address pressing concerns and issues of our time. Chapters explore efforts to recognize the legitimacy of stigmatized language varieties in public and institutional domains, museum-based science education for linguistically diverse children, how corpus analysis might illuminate the tension between the language choices and commitments of certain leaders, the embodied and artistic forms of meaning-making that challenge norms of Whiteness, and the transformative power of translanguaging in community-based theater. In addition, the volume demonstrates ways to enhance equity in healthcare delivery for immigrant families, examines the experiences of cultural health navigators working with refugee-background families, and highlights the value of raising public awareness of language issues related to social justice. These accounts show that applied linguists stand ready to interface with other scholars, other institutions, and the public to make socially-engaged and impactful contributions to the study of language, society, education, and access. Collectively, the authors respond to an important gap in the field and take a significant step towards a more socially-just, accessible, and inclusive approach to applied linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology is a broad survey of linguistic anthropology, featuring contributions from prominent scholars in the field. Each chapter presents a brief historical summary of research in the field and discusses topics and issues of current concern to people doing research in linguistic anthropology. The handbook is organized into four parts – Language and Cultural Productions; Language Ideologies and Practices of Learning; Language and the Communication of Identities; and Language and Local/Global Power – and covers current topics of interest at the intersection of the two fields, while also contextualizing them within discussions of fieldwork practice. Featuring 30 contributions from leading scholars in the field, The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology is an essential overview for students and researchers interested in understanding core concepts and key issues in linguistic anthropology.

This book introduces a new and still emerging theoretical framework for understanding language shift and uses this approach to explore a range of minority language communities in the United States. To date, approaches to language shift have typically relied on explaining the process through descriptive sociolinguistic models, i.e., how the community first becomes bilingual in both the majority and minority languages and then eventually shifts entirely to the majority language. The contributions in this volume instead attribute shift to a change from local control of tightly interconnected 'horizontal' institutions within a community to more external or 'vertical' control of those increasingly autonomous institutions outside the community; in short, language shift is driven by specific changes in community structure. In addition, unlike previous approaches to language shift, the one proposed here is generalizable. Following an introduction to the theory, the main five chapters in the book offer case studies of individual language communities, in different contexts and different periods. The final three chapters of the book take a broader perspective, looking beyond the United States: two leading specialists in the field provide critical commentaries on the theoretical approach and offer refinements to a theory of language shift, before a concluding chapter draws together the findings of the case studies and reflections on the commentaries. The volume will appeal to researchers and students in the fields of language revitalization, community studies, sociolinguistics, and social history.

Engaging Native American Publics considers the increasing influence of Indigenous groups as key audiences, collaborators, and authors with regards to their own linguistic documentation and representation. The chapters critically examine a variety of North American case studies to reflect on the forms and effects of new collaborations between language researchers and Indigenous communities, as well as the types and uses of products that emerge with notions of cultural maintenance and linguistic revitalization in mind. In assessing the nature and degree of change from an early period of "salvage" research to a period of greater Indigenous "self-determination," the volume addresses whether increased empowerment and accountability has truly transformed the terms of engagement and what the implications for the future might be.

Sovereignty and Sustainability examines how Native American authors in what is now called New England have maintained their own long and complex literary histories, often entirely outside of mainstream archives, libraries, publishing houses, and other institutions usually associated with literary canon-building. Indigenous people in the Northeast began writing in English almost immediately after the arrival of colonial settlers, and they have continued to write in almost every form—histories, newsletters, novels, poetry, and electronic media. Over the centuries, Native American authors have used literature to assert tribal self-determination and protect traditional homelands and territories. Drawing on the fields of Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental humanities, and literary history, Siobhan Senier argues that sustainability cannot be thought of apart from Indigenous sovereignty and that tribal sovereignty depends on environmental and cultural sustainability. Senier offers the framework of literary stewardship to show how works of Indigenous literature maintain, recirculate, and adapt tribally specific approaches to community, land, and relations. Individual chapters discuss Wampanoag historiography; tribal newsletters and periodicals; novelists and poets Joseph Bruchac, John Christian Hopkins, Cheryl Savageau, and Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel; and tribal literature on the web and in electronic archives. Pushing against the idea that Indians have vanished or are irrelevant today, Senier demonstrates to the contrary that regional Native literature is flourishing and looks to a dynamic future.

Naming the World examines language shift among the Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and the community’s diverse responses as it seeks social continuity. Andrew Cowell argues that, rather than a single “Arapaho culture,” we find five distinctive communities of practice on the reservation, each with differing perspectives on social and more-than-human power and the human relationships that enact power. As the Arapaho people resist Euro-American assimilation or domination, the Arapaho language and the idea that the language is sacred are key rallying points—but also key points of contestation. Cowell finds that while many at Wind River see the language as crucial for maintaining access to more-than-human power, others primarily view the language in terms of peer-oriented identities as Arapaho, Indian, or non-White. These different views lead to quite different language usage and attitudes in relation to place naming, personal naming, cultural metaphors, new word formation, and the understudied practice of folk etymology. Cowell presents data from conversations and other natural discourse to show the diversity of everyday speech and attitudes, and he links these data to broader debates at Wind River and globally about the future organization of indigenous societies and the nature of Arapaho and indigenous identity.