Abstract

The aim of the present article is to make a critical review of linguistic vitality data presented in previous quantitative investigations, proposing a new reading from a different epistemological perspective. Using the reported numerical data, a qualitative interpretation from different dimensions of analysis is made, showing a grade of linguistic vitality of the mapudungun higher than the one was represented by the quantity of speakers. This reading is based in the understanding of linguistic vitality as a process of which descriptive and explicative possibilities arise from the emergency of the cognitive/communicative schemes of distinction of the speakers, and the development of their own epistemologies. In general, the subject of the present article deals with the understanding of language as operative closure of the comprehension of the world, where world represents a cultural embodiment which substrate is the symbolic communication that can only occurs in and from the areas of use that language contains.