Concluding thoughts on the UNESCO methodology and its applicability

The present exercise has revealed both advantages and disadvantages of the UNESCO language endangerment assessment framework. One great strength of the framework is its ability to guide future

research and language revitalization work. By breaking language vitality and endangerment down into multiple dimensions, the framework allows us to focus on one thing at a time, preventing a language’s weakness in one dimension from being obscured or outweighed by strengths in another dimension, and vice versa. At the same time, it allows us to triangulate across different factors, noting interactions between them. This can make for more effective language revitalization strategies. Separating the dimensions can also reveal important gaps in the information available about a language’s situation, and stimulate research to fill those gaps.

A surprising weakness of the UNESCO framework is that it seems to be best suited to informal, subjective evaluations on the basis of firsthand experience. The present paper has referred to external sources wherever possible, but it has often proven difficult to relate the published evidence directly to the evaluation:

see, in particular, the discussions of Factor 1, Factor 3, Factor 4, Factor and Factor 8. UNESCO’s scales for these factors are structured as levels along a continuum from most to least endangered, using quantitative but unspecific criteria like “most” vs. “many” vs. “some”. This probably works well for smaller language communities with a few hundred to a few thousand speakers. In such cases, it would presumably be possible for a single observer or researcher to estimate this proportion quite accurately, and with sufficient precision for the six-level scale. This is not possible at the scale of Inner Mongolia. Where rigorous, comprehensive, quantitative data is not available—which it is not, for most of the data a UNESCO assessment would require—

the only alternative is to sift through the published literature for anecdotes and localized studies, in order to at least represent the range of variation in the language’s situation. As a consequence of its design, the UNESCO assessment framework is less accurate when applied to language communities with a large speaker population and/or a broad geographic extent. Despite some difficulties, the UNESCO assessment framework in its 2003 version (UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages, 2003) is a valuable and informative exercise. The author encourages others to adopt it.

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