Geolinguistics: Language Dynamics and Ethnolinguistic Geography

How and why have certain language groups become more important than others? Why have some languages declined or, in certain cases, disappeared completely?
Human geography has often ignored these questions. In this study, the author explores the concepts of linguistic minorities and their status, ethnicity, nationality, and linguistic identity from a geographical point of view. He examines how the various aspects of speech forms are distributed within a society in time and in space in order to determine if and how the geographer's approach can be used in delimiting and explaining these linguistic facts. Using the traditional tools of geography, Breton creates excellent maps, diagrams, charts, and figures that represent the measurement and distribution of linguistic groups in time and space. From this approach emerges the framework of an ecology of language, a new subdiscipline: geolinguistics.
The work includes an overview of the distribution of various languages throughout the world, with a preliminary outline of what the geography of language might be like using census data from countries such as Canada, Switzerland, and the USSR. Special attention is given to the languages that together are spoken as mother tongues by about 60 per cent of the population of the world.