Language Contexts articles descibe the contexts in which a language or variety is spoken, rather than the structure of the language/variety itself. They aim to provide detailed social, cultural and ethnographic information to complement existing reference information found in Glottolog or Ethnologue. Articles include information about speaker demography, social organisation, culture, linguistic ecology, language vitality, language use and transmission in the community and its diaspora, the range of languages/varieties in use by speakers, and socio-cultural factors affecting language/variety choice.
Contributors are researchers, including community members, who have worked on language revitalisation, language documentation, text collection, grammar, or ethnography, and who have detailed knowledge of a community and its language use.
EL Publishing aims to increase recognition of this important work. Compiling information about language contexts is original research that should receive professional and academic acknowledgement. The Language Contexts series (originally a sub-series of the journal Language Documentation and Description) provides a platform for publishing accurate, up-to-date information on languages and their contexts that is not available elsewhere.
See the Language Contexts list of downloadable articles.