“She can do it in English too”: Acts of intimacy and boundary-making in language revitalization

•Language endangerment research and projects of revitalization focus on communities of people, from families to institutions.•These communities interactionally negotiate and define their boundaries.•In people's strategic maneuvering within, around and through these boundaries, they impact revitalization.•Familial intimacy suggests a greater commitment and positive outcome for language revitalization than that of institutions.•This article shows that intimate groups are no more likely to produce positive outcomes than institutions.

This article argues that, for endangered languages, intimate modes of interaction become bounded in ways that both promote and endanger a threatened language. This contradiction becomes apparent when conceptions of “community” and “language” in relation to boundary-making practices are unpacked across different realms of discourse. Evidence from fieldwork conducted in the Yukon Territory, Canada, shows that on the one hand, the bureaucratic regimentation of endangered aboriginal languages forecasts an inclusive community; on the other, it delineates categories of “stakeholders.” Similarly, within an aboriginal language community, participation and responsibility become demarcated along various social lines such that the actual work of language revitalization creates opportunities for contestation, revealing how even the “intimate grammar” of interlocutors adumbrates differences in boundary-making and crossing.