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60 The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume III - 2011 60 Redefining çThainessé: Embracing Diversity, Preserving Unity Language Revitalization is an attempt to provide a new domain of language use in order to increase the use of the language and the number of users. According to Crystalûs (2000) six postulates to guide attempts of revitalization, an endangered language will progress if its speakers; 1) increase their prestige within the dominant community; 2) increase their wealth relative to the dominant community; 3) increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community; 4) have a strong presence in the educational system; 5) can write their language; and 6) can make use of electronic technology. Since many ethnic minority languages (large and small in Thailand) have been classified as being potentially endangered at various stages, a group of linguists at Mahidol University has pioneered a cooperative program to preserve these languages. Endangered language speakers and communities will participate in language documentation and description as well as in the language revitalization and maintenance program. The focus is to put community members at the heart of revitalization efforts through involvement in almost all steps of the revitalization process, such as orthography development, creation of local vernacular literature, collection of local knowledge, and instruction of the language to the next generation of speakers. This Mahidol revitalization model has been implemented with the cooperation of 22 language groups and the technical and psychological support of the Mahidol research team. The community › based language revitalization and maintenance model that has emerged from these efforts incorporates basic principles of reversing language shift (Fishman 1991), yet is sensitive to the distinct needs of each individual community. Figure 4: Mahidol Language Revitalization Model, Figure 5: On-going Language Revital Efforts in 22 language groups 54-75_mac9 5/3/12, 10:42 PM 60