Introduction: Minoritised languages and revitalisation strategies

Abstract

For the first time in human history, our physical and cultural environment is seriously threatened by direct human action. This implies that there are several factors that globally affect the relationships between humans and their environment, and that also condition the (often unequal) relationships that are woven between human communities. Phenomena linked to globalisation and climate change increase the economic poverty of social sectors around the world and facilitate the political marginalisation of certain communities while increasing the intensive exploitation of the places where they live: less industrialised territories suffer the effects of mining, overfishing and intensive agriculture and livestock farming, and this seriously affects the physical environment because it implies deforestation, drought, water pollution and, ultimately, loss of biodiversity (Skutnabb-Kangas & Harmon, 2018). All of this has major repercussions on the preservation not only of the environment, but also of the communities living in the affected territories, and thus on the maintenance of cultural heritage and the preservation of linguistic diversity