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A response to ‘Assessing levels of endangerment in the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) using the Language Endangerment Index (LEI)’, by Nala Huiying Lee & John Van Way

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Lenore A. Grenoble
Lenore A. Grenoble*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago, Department of Linguistics 1115 East 48th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, [email protected]
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Extract

The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is one of several similar responses to a perceived need for better data on language vitality. My remarks here are framed as a direct reply to Lee & Van Way's article, but really address larger issues in the ongoing debate about a perceived need to classify, inventory, and enumerate endangered languages. Lee & Van Way focus on one aspect of ELCat, the Language Endangerment Index (LEI), discussing a number of shortcomings in other current models. As an instrument for determining the level of language endangerment, the LEI is presented as a preferable alternative to other metrics, including Fishman's (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS), or EGIDS, the Expanded scale, based on the work of Lewis & Simons (2010), or UNESCO's (2003) expert scale. Lee & Van Way's discussion presupposes that such metrics are needed, and that it is beneficial to have a method for measuring vitality. Specifically, they argue that ‘for those concerned with preserving the world's fragile linguistic diversity, it is desirable to be able to quantify language vitality’. This is the underlying assumption of not only ELCat and LEI, but of other language catalogues, such as the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig 2015), UNESCO's Atlas (Moseley 2010), and other vitality metrics, as discussed in Lee & Van Way.

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Article Commentary
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Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 293 - 300
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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