SIL is committed to identifying and cataloging basic information about each of the thousands of distinct languages spoken in the world today. Our Ethnologue database presently contains information about more than 6,500. The "outside world" knows very little about more than half of these languages. We continue to gather and organize information about them through on-the-field surveys, library research, and collaboration with other agencies and scholars.

Each of these minority or endangered language groups has its own unique social structures, while simultaneously existing within larger regional, national, and international societies. As in a biological ecosystem, any change in interconnected social systems - no matter how seemingly small - can have potentially large consequences. Any outside person or agency offering to assist these language communities as they make decisions for change needs to understand a lot about the social, linguistic, economic, and political frameworks they operate within.

The LinguaLinks Sociolinguistics bookshelf is designed to train and help local, national, and international staff members of

• private,
• government,
• humanitarian, and
• educational agencies

By using the Sociolinguistics bookshelf, you will be able to:

• determine what minority and endangered languages exist in your geographic area
• find out whether each one is experiencing decline, stability, or expansion of its vernacular language use
• find out whether each one is experiencing decline, stability, or expansion of its vernacular language use
• decide what, if anything, external agencies could do to help the language community reach its goals
• project some of the predictable consequences of changes.

The LinguaLinks Sociolinguistic bookshelf is broken into three main tasks:

• Language survey,
• Language assessment
• Language program planning

The language survey section will show you how to identify and inventory the languages in a geographic region, based on things like: linguistic distinctives, social groupings, geographic distribution, and political "boundaries" which a group of people may use to identify themselves as being distinct from others.

You will also learn how to observe and record information about

• differing patterns of language use by men and women,
• differing language use by adults versus children,
• differing language use by social context,
• different dialects of the same language,
• bilingualism in regional and national languages,
• numbers of speakers of the language, and
• many other factors.

In the language assessment section you will find tools for interpreting the data collected in the surveys, and for reporting any significant patterns or trends found in the data regarding such things as:

• increase or decrease in the use of the vernacular language over time,
• changes in the internal cohesiveness and stability of the group, and
• social, linguistic, economic, and political pressures being exerted by outsiders.

By using the language program planning section you will be able to work through a process of identifying ways in which resources from outside the community could possibly be made available to the language community to facilitate the goals the community establishes for itself. The LinguaLinks Sociolinguistics bookshelf brings together information, how-to procedures, and guidance that give you a clear road map through this process.

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