The dilemmas of a gardener: discussing the arguments against language revitalisation

The article restates and comments on the most common arguments against language maintenance and revitalisation found in popular texts and discussion articles from academic journals. By grouping them and assessing their validity we may better see which objections must be faced and which are based on easily disproven misconceptions. The described counterarguments are divided into four groups and based on the ideas of linguistic natural selection, peaceful death of a language, reductionist approach to the language, and sociopolitical factors. Most of them seem to use overgeneralisations and fail to recognise the deeper causes behind language obsolescence. The most valid, depending on the individual situation, are the arguments based on socio-political reasons. Generalisations and essentialising discourse, however, are also found in the opinions of the proponents of language maintenance. The author claims that the truly universal arguments in favour of language maintenance are in fact only those based on the subjective convictions of the people involved, as all rational arguments can be undermined in certain contexts.