ABSTRACT
Linguistics offers fundamental concepts for the development of a demography of language. Given that languages are attributes of populations and that the individuals who make up these populations are their speakers, it is necessary to clearly determine what is understood by “language” and by “speaker” from psychological, social, cultural, and of course linguistic perspectives. Linguistics, in addition to highlighting the difficulties in defining and identifying languages, demands that those variations which are not equivalent to languages in and of themselves are not considered to be of equal value. From a psycho-sociolinguistic perspective, the model in which languages are identified and named proves decisive, given that the indiscriminate use of labels can blur demographic analysis. It is not the same to speak of a “mother tongue” as it is to speak of a “native language,” “first language,” or “dominant language.” In the same fashion, the reality of second languages should be distinguished from the reality of inherited languages. This gives rise to a typology of speakers with bilinguals holding special prominence, as they prove very relevant for demolinguistics. Among the concepts of interest for demolinguistics, “community” is worthy of special consideration, given that the limits of communities serve as a reference for the demarcation of populations. When various languages coexist within a community, the coexistence can take shape as “diglossia,” in which the languages involved fulfill different social functions in different “areas” of use. Likewise, it’s important for demolinguistics to know the dynamics of minority and minoritized languages, as their vitality depends on qualitative and quantitative factors. Linguistic demography has devoted important efforts to studying the situation of minority languages, although its fundamental methodological instruments are valid for the analysis of any other kinds of languages.
