LL explorations and methodological challenges

Abstract

The methodologies employed over these first years of LL research have evolved rapidly in several different directions, although quantitative and/or qualitative approaches have guided most published scholarship thus far. The quantitative approach has come to be reduced in one particular narrative to the counting of signs, whilst qualitative research is portrayed as permitting analysis of a selection of signs from which wider conclusions can be drawn. Using an on-going project into France’s regional languages in the LL, this article argues that a symbiotic approach is essential for contributing to discussions on language revitalization in the public space. Whilst quantitative data collection contextualizes language use, a subsequent qualitative examination, along several vectors, avoids impressionistic conclusions about the correlation between visibility and vitality. We contend here that this dual approach permits cross-referencing across space and time in ways not possible by adopting one or other methodology on its own.