What is reversing language shift (RLS) and how can it succeed?

Abstract

Several societal and social biases have conspired to make the study of language maintenance and language shift more advanced than the study of reversing language shift (RLS). RLS efforts have been confused with messianic (i.e. irrational) and past‐oriented (i.e. nativistic) movements, overlooking their rational, priority setting and modernising dirust. Even diose engaged in the study or practice of RLS, however, have tended to lack theoretical coherence and to be mesmerised by ‘activism’ rather than by the empirical relationship between any particular RLS efforts and die demonstrable intergenerational transmissibility of language‐imbedded behaviours, attitudes and beliefs. Where bilingualism with diglossia is all that can be realistically attained, RLS emphases must concentrate on family‐neighbourhood‐community building boundary‐setting efforts. Where largely monolingual cultural autonomy becomes realistically possible, more inter‐group confrontation RLS efforts should be undertaken, but their link to intergenerational transmissibility still requires explicit attention. (Post‐)modernisation poses serious new RLS problems for the family‐neighbourhood‐community, and the school as well, makingit imperative for RLS efforts to be incentive‐related far above and beyond their initial language‐in‐society (Xmen‐widi‐Xish) ideals.