La nozione di “lingua madre” in contesto minoritario

Abstract

Natural languages are intimately linked to the individuals, groups and territories in which they live. In this paper I will try to explore the nature of this connection, also in light of the environmental emergency, which arouses growing passion and civil commitment. The aim is to try to establish, through the ecological perspective, a sufficiently robust link between attention to mother languages (in the sense of languages of first territorialization) – in particular, although not exclusively, local, regional or minority languages – and attention to the environment, to the landscape. The latter are to be understood as a set and tangle of natural and social elements from which we emerge, in which we live and which we have the responsibility to hand over to future generations.