Abstract
Until recently (socio)linguistic studies concerned with minority languages focused chiefly on native speakers. Equally, (ethno)linguistic revitalisation efforts aimed to strengthen or reinstall intergeneration transmission of the language.
Currently, however, a change is occurring within the context of the phenomenon of new speakers, i.e. persons who have acquired the language in a way different from the family background, or of postvernacular languages or xenolects formed on this basis. The increase in the significance of the (activist) new speakers (in many cases outnumbering the traditional users of the language) has become so important since the turn of the 21st century that at present conducting research on this phenomenon ranks among representative branches of ethnolinguistic revitalisation issues.
Despite the shift under discussion, the given framework still contains a number of yet unsolved and open levels, e.g. in connection with the flexibility and fluidity of the borders of the linguistic field, which seemed firm until recently, with questions of legitimacy and authenticity of various types of the language, or a possible bridging of the dichotomous gap and the integration of both groups of the users.