Any language must be used if it is to be passed onto future generations, this being especially true for co-official, endangered, indigenous, regional and minority languages (hereafter RMLs), that typically enjoy fewer opportunities of being spoken and used in everyday situations.
On many occasions RML speakers adopt self-censoring attitudes and switch to a majority language avoiding to use their own. This switch to the majority language can happen even if their counterpart is perfectly able to understand the minority one, for instance, when the minority language is officially recognized as well, or when the language is understood in the surrounding context. It can also be the case that they keep speaking the majority language simply as a matter of habit, because this is the way they are used to, even if both speakers could change.
Assertiveness is the quality of being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. It is a learnable skill and mode of communication. When applied to languages, it implies training people to express themselves in their own language whilst feeling calm and self-assured, as well as when people are uncertain if their counterparts are speakers of the same language.
The purpose of the LISTEN project is to give speakers of RMLs the means to act on their behaviour and to modify it by adopting strategies of linguistic assertiveness.
