Language maintenance is the phenomenon and academic concept concerned with the continued use and transmission of a language by a speech community across generations, particularly within contexts where external pressures or contact with other languages favor language shift or loss. As a research field, it investigates the socio-cultural, economic, political, and linguistic factors that contribute to a language's vitality, the strategies and policies employed by communities and institutions to sustain its use, and the dynamics underlying linguistic resilience in the face of homogenizing forces.