The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is the central feature of the Google-powered Endangered Languages Project (endangeredlanguages.com), which is a venue for sharing information and resources on the world's endangered languages and the knowledge contained in them. One key feature of ELCat is a quantitative measure that can be used to understand the level of endangerment of any language. Quantitative measurements are needed to compare language vitality across a variety of contexts around the globe, and can be used as a parallel to measurements of other forms of threats to biocultural diversity. This article addresses the development of the Language Endangerment Index (LEI). Based on four factors (intergenerational transmission, absolute number of speakers, speaker number trends, and domains of use), this index is different from other methods of assessment in several ways, especially as it can be used even if limited information is available. (Language endangerment, vitality, intergenerational transmission, speaker numbers, domains of language use)*

This article systematically explores the sequential contexts for making multiple requests during shop encounters. Based on video recordings in convenience stores in France and Finland, it describes the multimodal practices that buyers and sellers use to treat multiple requests as progressively building a global buying project. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how multiple requests can be packed together, as relatively simple actions achieved simultaneously or successively in embodied and verbal ways either as subsequent contiguous sequences of actions, or as sequences of actions separated by inserted actions. This article also examines how requests are tied together, and how ‘late’ requests are fitted to the last sequential opportunities in the unfolding encounter. This analysis contributes to the study of commercial encounters and the buying process, as well as to the understanding of sequence organization. It likewise contributes to comparative analyses by discussing the similarities and specificities of this activity across cultural contexts and in different time periods. (Requests, shop encounters, social interaction, multimodality, French, Finnish)

This study focuses on the tensions around Portugal's language policies and citizens’ perceptions of their linguistic rights in the context of the current orthographic reform. Unlike other linguistic rights studies, this enquiry does not focus on endangered languages or linguistic minorities. Instead, there are three major ingredients that embody linguistic-rights claims by European Portuguese speakers: the right to be heard on orthographic reform in a democratic society, ownership and authenticity of the Portuguese language, and the need for protection against external (or, more specifically, Brazilian) hegemony. A critical discourse analysis approach to the arguments put forward by European Portuguese opponents of the orthographic reform shows that the ongoing discussion: (i) is neither about language nor about rights, but about competition; (ii) is based on linguistic dichotomies and recategorization of speakers and languages; (iii) manipulates the rhetoric of threat, endangerment, linguistic rights, and democracy; and (iv) opens up intra-linguistic and inter-variety spaces for conceptualizing linguistic rights claims. (Language ideological debate, public understanding, language planning, linguistic rights, orthographic reform)

This article presents ethnographic data emerging from research with a group of LGBT young people, detailing the construction of a shared identity. Using discourse analysis, it shows how the group members position people of South Asian descent as a homogenous out-group, one framed as ‘other’ to their own in-group identity of ‘non-Asian’ due to the assumption that Asian people are homophobic. It is argued that this very local form of identity construction is facilitated by broader discourses of Islamophobia, as well as homonormative ideologies positioning gay people as white. The article therefore provides evidence to support Bucholtz & Hall's (2005) claim that identity positioning relates not only to the interactional moment and the norms of a given ethnographic context, but that it also encompasses macro-level discourses and ideologies. It also, however, reveals the pervasiveness of Islamophobic discourses in Britain today, and the marginalisation of LGBT people of colour. (LGBT identity, racist discourse, homonormativity, Islamophobia)*

The adoption of English as the official language of the transnational Ismaili Muslim community has its roots in the British Raj, which provides the backdrop for recent Ismaili history. Yet it is the Aga Khan IV, spiritual leader of the community since 1957, who has most avidly pushed English as part of a ‘language policy’. Drawing on Ismaili discourse published online, historical sources, secondary literature, and data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Pakistan and Eastern Tajikistan, this article addresses how English emerged as the community's official language, how and why it was made integral to the community's transnational infrastructure, and what English means to Ismailis living in a village in Hunza, Northern Pakistan and the city of Khorog, Eastern Tajikistan. It thereby underscores that identity and infrastructure emerge as entangled, and it reflects upon the implications of this relationship for research on English and Islam, and language and transnationalism. (Transnationalism, English, Ismaili, Pakistan, Tajikistan, identity, infrastructure, Islam)*

The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is one of several similar responses to a perceived need for better data on language vitality. My remarks here are framed as a direct reply to Lee & Van Way's article, but really address larger issues in the ongoing debate about a perceived need to classify, inventory, and enumerate endangered languages. Lee & Van Way focus on one aspect of ELCat, the Language Endangerment Index (LEI), discussing a number of shortcomings in other current models. As an instrument for determining the level of language endangerment, the LEI is presented as a preferable alternative to other metrics, including Fishman's (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS), or EGIDS, the Expanded scale, based on the work of Lewis & Simons (2010), or UNESCO's (2003) expert scale. Lee & Van Way's discussion presupposes that such metrics are needed, and that it is beneficial to have a method for measuring vitality. Specifically, they argue that ‘for those concerned with preserving the world's fragile linguistic diversity, it is desirable to be able to quantify language vitality’. This is the underlying assumption of not only ELCat and LEI, but of other language catalogues, such as the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig 2015), UNESCO's Atlas (Moseley 2010), and other vitality metrics, as discussed in Lee & Van Way.