Language, multilingualism, biocultural diversity and sustainability

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between multilingualism, considered both as an environmental and personal phenomenon, and biocultural diversity, a biological, cultural and linguistic complex, each of which are essential components of the characteristics of resilience and transformability that underlie sustainable evolutionary processes. It argues that increasing language mortality and tendencies towards environmental and personal monolingualism put at has a fundamental role to play in the search for new pathways.