Language Survival A Conversation

Why do some languages thrive while others are pushed to the brink? In this wide-ranging and accessible conversation, Ilan Stavans and Mark Turin explore the forces that shape the lives of languages: empire and migration, schooling and standardization, dictionaries and translation, technology and activism, memory and desire. Moving across Indigenous communities, global languages, hybrid forms, and revitalization movements, they ask what it means for a language to be lost, who decides which languages matter, and what is at stake when communities fight to keep their words alive. At once lyrical and argumentative, historical and contemporary, Language Survival invites readers to think of language not simply as a tool of communication but as a record of human experience, a site of struggle, and a resource for imagining different futures.