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In today's world, thousands of small language groups are facing pressure to abandon their traditional language in favor of a more dominant language from elsewhere. The basic decision that members of these communities must make is how they will sustain their identity and how the essential bodies of knowledge associated with that identity will be transmitted to succeeding generations. This book develops a framework, called the Sustainable Use Model (SUM), for addressing these issues. The book describes how to observe language use to understand the current language ecology, how to assess the sustainability of the languages in the linguistic repertoire of the speech community, and then how to design a program of activities aimed at achieving sustainable language use.

A formal print edition of this book is also available.

\"In this clearly written monograph, Paul Lewis and Gary Simons lay the groundwork for those who will be working in the coming decades with members of local language communities to help them to implement diverse activities that will most effectively lead to a sustainable level of language use. They build appropriately upon the groundbreaking work that was carried out several decades ago by sociolinguists such as Charles Ferguson, Robert Cooper and Joshua Fishman.\" (from the Foreword by G. Richard Tucker).

This volume is the result of about ten years of reflection and discussion by the authors and a large and experienced group of colleagues regarding SIL International’s corporate learning after 80 years of working in local communities to develop less-commonly known languages. This book is aimed at those who are “on the ground” working with a community to address the issues that arise from language and culture contact. Ideally, many in that audience will themselves be members of those communities. The book is designed to be both a textbook and a handbook.

This, the latest draft of the Sustainable Use Model textbook, is not yet in its final state. Please let us know if you find typos or sentences that are not clear or instances of faulty reasoning. We would also appreciate help with finding more examples, whether a personal communication that you would be willing to share or a pointer to a good example in the published literature. In the latter case, we will need the bibliographic citation.

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Kick off your book project in 3 hours! Live workshop on Zoom. You’ll leave with a real book project, progress on your first chapter, and a clear plan to keep going. Saturday, May 2, 2026. Learn more…

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