Four “Laws” of Language Revitalization

Abstract

Language revitalization of Native American languages requires going beyond the worldview, methods, and expectations of the official language model. Successful language revitalization takes into account a more or less limited role of the heritage language in the speech community, as well as how to reach varying levels of revitalization. The revitalization of a Native American heritage language has to fit into the speech community’s linguistic ideology and outlook in order to have value as a revitalized language that community members actually use. The linguistic ideology of the official language model must be rejected.