Assessing language vitality

A case of Indigenous Kuwi

Bibliographic Data

ID21458458
AuthorsGunti Prem Sagar (0000-0002-6708-6326, Bakalia Government College, Chattogram), Ajaya Sahoo (0000-0001-6952-4476, Bakalia Government College, Chattogram), Anindita Sahoo (Indian Institute of Technology Madras)
Year2026
Volume49
Issue1
Pages87-111
Publication date2026-02-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Review of Applied Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0155-0640 • E-ISSN: 1833-7139
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/aral.24115.pre
OpenAlexW4412695926
LanguageEN
References cited21

Assessment of a language is about the evaluation of its vitality. To understand the vitality of a language, a language community should be assessed every few decades, so that the success of any revitalization program can be evaluated according to its vitality index. Based on language vitality, we can formulate specific revitalization methods/programs to help nurture individual languages. In this paper, we critically examine two assessment tools, UNESCO and EGIDS, and explore their effectiveness and problems by applying them to assessing the vitality of Kuwi, an Indigenous language spoken in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. In the process, we investigate the meaning of the term “Indigenous” by discussing the issues related to language endangerment and its causes in the context of multilingual and pluricultural India

Linguistics · Sociology · Theology · Vitality · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology

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