ABSTRACT
Efforts of maintaining threatened and minority languages are today a global concern. This concern manifests itself in various activities of UNESCO and other international institutions aimed at maintaining linguistic diversity, for example, the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL), the Hans Rausing Endangered Language Project (HRELP) or the Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen (DoBeS) project. At the same time, endangered languages are locally anchored. Behind the proliferation of discourse on language endangerment over the past two decades is a newly articulated tolerance of cultural and linguistic diversity – a tolerance spread through globalization. Attempts to maintain or revitalize heritage languages and cultures are therefore at once both global and local. Consider the following example. With regard to the recent recognition of the Ainu as indigenous people of Japan, Lewallen (2008) writes: “G8 Summitrelated events – including the IPS [Indigenous People Summit] in Ainu Mosir [Hokkaido] – have been indentified as the key elements which pushed the Diet toward granting Ainu indigenous recognition.” What Lewallen describes is a local event being driven decisively by global forces.
