ABSTRACT
Demography works fundamentally with populations and, because languages are spoken by individuals grouped in populations, any analysis of these results in a better understanding of the social life of languages. Demography, therefore, has enormous significance for the study of languages and their varieties within society. Demographic studies are interested in populations and their composition, distribution, and changes. The composition of populations is determined by factors such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, educational level, and employment. Although they materialize in individuals, each of these factors offers a social dimension which inevitably reveals implications of a socioeconomic nature. Likewise, each of these factors can be correlated with linguistic aspects, such that the confluence of the study of languages and societies leads to a better understanding of the vitality of languages and their varieties. Regarding the distribution of populations, it’s obvious that this is also reflected in the distribution of languages. This can be geographical, of course, but it is also social, even on the household level. As for the changes experienced by populations (the true nucleus of demographic analysis) it’s also evident that birth and death rates of human groups have repercussions for the vitality of languages. Likewise, migrations determine movements of groups of speakers and give rise to social conditions that affect processes as decisive as intergenerational transmission, the formation of bilingual communities, or linguistic substitutions.
