2011 Volume 7 Issue 4 Pages 112-118
The establishment of Ryukyuan linguistics as a discipline in its own rights is rather recent. This manifests, among other things, in the late establishment of sociolinguistic research. Prominent topics of sociolinguistic research in the past few years have mainly focused on assessing the degree of language endangerment, the study of language shift, and the study of Ryukyu's changing language regime. This leaves many important fields of research unexplored at present. Ryukyuan sociolinguistics henceforth will need to grow considerably, and cooperate more closely with descriptive research and attempts of language revitalization, if it is to play a decisive role in supporting Ryukyuan language maintenance.
