language loss and climate change

[Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada]

Dear Nigel,

I am not familiar with any such literature (but I will admit that language
endangerment is not my primary area of research so there might be someone
here who knows about something) but I think that the reason for the lack of
such literature (at least in a more visible way if there is any) is that we
are just starting to see the effects of climate change on humans (well,
beyond floods and droughts...). This article came to my attention yesterday
"First Official Climate Change Refugees Evacuate Their Island Homes for
Good" ( @
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/first-official-climate-change-refugees-evacuate-their-island-homes-for-good.htm)
and two of the things I thought about were what language(s) they spoke and
what would become of their language now that they are being removed from
their environment.

A little (very little, just Wikipedia-little) research told me that they
are Halia speakers and Ethnologue says that the language has about 20,000
speakers (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/HLA/***EDITION***) so,
although it is unlikely that the language as whole will become endangered
as a result of this climate-change induced relocation, their dialect might
be.

Best,
Jorge


On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Nigel Vincent <
nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

>  There is a considerable literature on species loss attributable to
> climate change. Can anyone point me to articles that discuss language loss
> or endangerment that has come about through the effects of climate change?
> Thanks in advance.
> Nigel
>
>
>    Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
>
> Vice-President for Research & HE Policy, The British Academy
>
>  Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>  The University of Manchester
> Manchester M13 9PL
> UK
>
>
>
> http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=nigel.vincent
>



-- 
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada
PhD candidate & Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar
Department of French Studies (Linguistics)
University of Western Ontario
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