Variationist sociolinguistic methods with Indigenous language communities.

In this noteworthy study of the Even language in northeastern Russia, Grenoble and Osipov provide a vivid empirical account of variation in the context of language shift. The authors point out that such contact situations frequently lead to significant shift and loss of language vitality, and it is likely that a large proportion of such languages around the world will undergo dramatic language shift or loss in the current century ([6]; [3], [4], [5]). Classic, Western-based sociolinguistic principles have been successful in creating generalizable models of language change, but they may not reflect the character of language variation in small, non-Western language communities. After all, ever since [24], linguists have been aware that language change can be observed while it happens; the ongoing processes of language change can become visible when we examine how different groups in a society are using different variants. [Extracted from the article]