Urgent need for a new framework for protecting global language diversity

The global loss of cultural and linguistic diversity requires a holistic focus similar to the global response to the ecological crisis. This article aims to summarise our comprehensive reality-based framework, which we call Language Dynamics in Society (LanDS) for understanding how languages live in societies, or for describing ethnolinguistic sustainability and the sociolinguistic crisis threatening global language diversity. The LanDS framework builds on Joshua Fishman’s seminal contributions to sustaining ethnolinguistic vitality from the 1960s to the 2000s.