Language Endangerment

Languages and language varieties around the globe have been diminishing at an astonishing rate. Despite great efforts at language documentation, scholarship on metaphors and figurative units – often particularly fragile parts of language – has been largely neglected until recently. This book, like its predecessor Endangered Metaphors (CLSCC 2, 2012), focuses on disappearing metaphors and idioms from languages of diverse continents. Moreover, the book analyzes work from online social interaction, discusses topics such as language maintenance, educational practice and revitalization, as well as future directions for endangered metaphor studies. The book is highly innovative and produces new findings for linguistics and cultural studies: the more languages are examined, especially minority varieties distant from western languages, the more questionable becomes “universality” in the field of metaphor, with unique linguistic data across chapters, evidencing the non-universality of conceptual metaphors and calling for a revision of existing metaphor theories. The book will be of special interest to: linguistics (metaphor and phraseology research, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology), public policy, sociology; community activists and educators of language maintenance and revitalization.