Book Review: Language Revitalisation and Social Transformation

The anthology Language Revitalisation and Social Transformation is from the Palgrave series on Language and Globalization. This volume, edited by Huw Lewis and Wilson McLeod, offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary situation of regional and minority language (RML) revitalisation. It is separated into four thematic parts, each of which is comprised of three chapters, the third always being an editors’ summary. In the editors’ introduction, the volume is situated into the broader discourse of minority languages and language revitalisation. This involves stating that while the challenges faced by RMLs are global, this anthology focuses predominately on efforts in industrialised, Westernised contexts, with an Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe

138 overwhelmingly emphasis on Celtic languages in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, RMLs of even continental Western Europe are largely absent from the volume's chapters. The editors suggest this is done to allow for meaningful comparisons, referencing the impacts of factors such as colonialism in different contexts, yet they fail to otherwise make clear what commonalities make their selected comparisons significant. Defining this would have been prudent, as RMLs, even within Western Europe, can exist in drastically different political, social, and economic contexts, particularly in the case of RMLs which may be the -or anational language of another state, as opposed to those which exist largely within a single, subnational geographic area. The introduction also grounds the volume in the existing literature surrounding topics of language revitalisation and language maintenance, particularly as they relate to late American linguist Joshua Fishman. They conclude the introduction with the primary questions they seek to address, which anticipate the four parts: Communities, Families, Economy, and Governance.
The first part, Communities, explores the challenges faced by RMLs in a world increasingly defined by greater mobility. In the first chapter, The Geography of Minority Language Use: From Community to Network, Rhys Jones seeks to expand how RMLs are understood in terms of geographic space. Language policy and planning in Wales, he argues, has focused on Welsh in a limited physical geography, but should be broadened to include the complex networks in which Welsh-speakers live, and thereby modified to include their modern realities of mobility and interconnectivity. The second chapter, Minority Languages in the Age of Networked Individualism: From Social Networks to Digital Breathing Spaces, from Daniel Cunliffe, examines the role of digital connectivity for RML communities. While traditional, offline social networks are often a lifeline for RMLs, online social networks provide many of the same avenues for their promotion, to the extent that Cunliffe argues that offline and online networks should be considered as one consummate RML social network. The final chapter,

Communities, Networks and Contemporary Language Revitalisation, contains an editors'
summary which uses the previous two chapters to explore other community-related questions pertaining to language revitalisation by both those engaged in it and by the academic community.
The second part, Families, engages with the changing forms of families and childrearing, and how these impact the intergenerational transmission of RMLs. Opening with

Family Language Policy and Language Transmission in Times of Change, Kendall King and
Ling Wang outline how researchers and policy-makers alike must shift away from the a final word from the editors themselves, however, which might have sought to achieve the same synthesis of all four thematic parts, akin to their chapter summaries, is an unfortunate omission. Their perspectives both introduce the anthology and tie each chapter together, yet are absent from the volume's conclusion.
As a whole, the volume is useful for those involved with the promotion and revitalisation of RMLs, whether academically or politically. While the European-focused scope was outlined in the introduction, greater inclusion of examples beyond Ireland and the UK would have been welcomed as chapter foci. Nevertheless, the anthology represents a comprehensive contribution to the multi-faceted topic of language revitalisation in Europe.