•By focusing on identification, the study advances identity research in our field.•Contrary to previous research, some Yucatec Maya speakers now identify as maya.•Speakers strategically ...essentialized, appropriated and articulated Yucatec Mayanness.•Participation in language revitalization engendered Indigenous ethnogenesis.•Postcolonial theory as excellent conceptual framework for language revitalization.
This ethnographic, discourse analytic study elucidates a poorly understood area of applied linguistics: identity issues in Indigenous language education. Multi-year data – from large Yucatec Maya language programs that enrolled over 200 learners, including schoolteachers and Yucatec Maya-speaking university students – reveal a new stage of Indigenous ethnogenesis in the Yucatan, Mexico. European colonization has decimated countless Indigenous languages, and language revitalization represents a global movement for linguistic decolonization. I use postcolonial theory to explain how involvement in revitalization programs led students to form new self-understandings and representations of “Mayanness.” Specifically, participants deployed three processes of Indigenous identification: strategic essentialization, appropriation, and articulation. While anthropologists have previously asserted that Yucatec Maya speakers do not self-identify as “ethnic” Mayas, this research reveals that some now do. Additionally, this study advances theorization of Indigenous language revitalization, the postcolonial turn in applied linguistics, and the field more broadly by centering on “identification” – which conceptualizes identity-as-process.
More than a third of the world's languages are currently classified as endangered and more than half are expected to go extinct by 2100. Strategies aimed at revitalizing endangered languages have ...been implemented in numerous countries, with varying degrees of success. Here, we develop a new model regarding language transmission by dividing the population into defined proficiency categories and dynamically quantifying transition rates between categories. The model can predict changes in proficiency levels over time and, ultimately, whether a given endangered language is on a long-term trajectory towards extinction or recovery. We calibrate the model using data from Wales and show that the model predicts that the Welsh language will thrive in the long term. We then apply the model to te reo Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, as a case study. Initial conditions for this model are estimated using New Zealand census data. We modify the model to describe a country, such as New Zealand, where the endangered language is associated with a particular subpopulation representing the indigenous people. We conclude that, with current learning rates, te reo Māori is on a pathway towards extinction, but identify strategies that could help restore it to an upward trajectory.
As schools shift to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to support disenfranchised populations and keep issues of equity at the centre of our response. In this study, the ...authors focus on supporting one of the few urban-based Indigenous language schools in the United States because language revitalisation is critical for Native American communities. The authors explore the extent to which video conferencing and flipped classrooms support the development of a community of speakers. The study focuses on a single classroom of 16 students in first through third grade. The authors use a digital decolonisation framework focused on empowering local communities in conjunction with design-based research methodology to explore contextualised remote instruction solutions. They report on benefits for the development of a community of speakers from remote instruction that come with costs in reduced efficacy of language learning. Finally, they distil those results into preliminary design principles.
During the last 30 years, Ecuador has seen important transformations regarding policies related to indigenous languages in the country. At the same time, foreign and local scholars have carried out ...numerous linguistic and anthropological investigations on several of the indigenous languages spoken in the country; however, these have had little or no impact on the vitality of the languages, which show a persistent tendency towards displacement. Framed in practices of active documentation-revitalization, this article aims to briefly show the displacement trends of Kichwa in Ecuador, to illustrate and analyze research processes that, based on collaborative research developed along with the indigenous communities, move further from documentation that exclusively benefits the linguistic scientific community, to focus on the speakers as the main agents-beneficiaries of revitalizing processes. Within such perspective, this article also describes several revitalization strategies emerging from Kichwa-speaking activists. Finally, the article brings into reflection regarding research methodologies, and underlines the urgent need to move towards true intercultural practices based more equitable interrelationships which should positively impact at the micro, meso and macro levels.
Within the last two decades, there has been increased interest in how technology supports Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation efforts. This paper considers the effect technology has on ...Indigenous language learning and teaching, while conceptualizing how language educators, speakers, learners, and technology users holistically understand, skillfully apply and communicate creative and balanced technological solutions that are based on understanding of contextual factors. A total of 80 participants representing at least 47 Indigenous languages completed a survey in 2009 representing individuals, organizations, and institutions that serve one or more Indigenous language communities across the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Guatemala, Peru, Greenland, Mexico, Bolivia, French Polynesia (Marquesas Islands and Tuamotu Islands), and Russia. The data reveal the functions digital technology has in Indigenous language revitalization, which include (1) positive and supportive roles (2) concerns, constraints, and tensions, and (3) Indigenous language education. Regardless of the size of the community, opportunities for using technology in Indigenous language revitalization efforts are shaped by linguistic, cultural, social, economic, environmental, and technological factors as expressed in the technacy framework for language revitalization. Findings indicate that technology has wide and mostly positive applications in language learning and teaching, that the benefits of those applications remain consistent across communities regardless of size and geographic location, and that new and innovative uses of technology are being adopted to support language revitalization efforts. Overall, the study underscores the importance of context in making grounded decisions about technology as a component of contemporary language revitalization efforts.
Based on original and long-term research in two ideologically divergent Native American linguistic communities, I want to demonstrate the surprising persistence of Indigenous language ideologies ...associated with multilingualism and how differences in these ideologies have manifested in divergent patterns of language shift and, more recently, in the nature and scope of language revitalization efforts. The Village of Tewa (NE Arizona) still partially retains a multilingual adaptation in all generations except the youth and young adults (Kroskrity, 1993, 2014). The Western Mono (Central California) of such towns as North Fork and Auberry were traditionally multilingual with neighboring languages of the Yokuts and Southern Sierra Miwok groups (Kroskrity 2009). Though both groups were historically multilingual, the practice of multilingualism was differentially influenced by distinctive language ideologies such as those regarding purism/syncretism and the expressive/utilitarian functions of language. I will demonstrate that divergent indigenous ideological complexes associated with multilingualism have shaped distinctive patterns of language shift—a process significantly more totalizing among the Western Mono. In addition to language shift, these indigenous ideological complexes also appear to significantly influence such language revitalization practices as the private curation vs. publication of language renewal materials (Debenport, 2015). I facilitate this contrast and highlight patterns of persistence by developing the notion of language ideological assemblage.
•Data from Native American Communities argues for the need to understand their multilingualisms.•Indigenous multilingualisms vary due to differences in their language ideological assemblages.•Ideological assemblages encompass the interaction of indigenous and colonial ideologies.•These assemblages influence both language shift and revitalization.•Resilient Indigenous assemblages prefigure the form and scope of revitalization programs.
In the field of innovation, three constructs co-exist in different research streams that are exploring disadvantaged communities - grassroots innovations, inclusive innovations and social ...innovations. In this paper we examine an innovation that involves language: the revival of a language among an Aboriginal tribal community in Australia. In our qualitative-conceptual analysis of the case, we uncover that a) the innovation appears at various stages of the language revival project to cut across the typologies of grassroots, inclusive and social innovations; b) complementarities in the three types of innovation contribute to project initiation, planning, and execution. Based on these findings, we extend the conceptualization of what has been typically accepted as grassroots innovation. Specifically, our analysis of the case calls for a conceptualization of grassroots innovation to include initiation of innovations by external parties and co-production on the part of local communities. We conclude with a proposition that the dynamics of grassroots innovation, originated, observed and conceptualized in the context of disadvantaged communities, could be incorporated in organizational contexts through policies and structure that empower the members of such organizations.
Abstract In this article, a social movement lens is applied to examine the dynamics of an urbanbased language revitalization movement in the Autonomous Community of Galicia (North-western Spain). The ...potential of Resource Management Theory is explored as a way of systematically analysing the dynamics of urban-based language revitalization movements. It does this by identifying factors which both helped fuel the emergence and growth of this Galician grassroots movement as well as those constraining its potential development. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations collected over six months of ethnographic fieldwork in one of Galicia’s main cities, social movement theory is used to analyse the role of Galician social movement activists as social agents in shaping the success of their language revitalization initiative. We argue that a social movement lens provides a useful analytical toolkit to focus on the grassroots efforts of social agents involved in peripheral ethnolinguistic mobilization in minority language contexts such as Galicia. Ultimately, we aim to show that these social movement revitalization initiatives go beyond language as an object and are centred around language-based struggles which not only address strategy dilemmas but also scaffold social relations and ties among speakers as they mobilize within particular institutional fields.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Indigenous communities have persisted in Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation efforts. This research utilized a scan of social media, a survey, and ...interviews, conducted in the summer and fall of 2020 and primarily focused on Canada, to explore: What shifts to support Indigenous language work occurred during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic? and What were the impacts of these shifts on Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation? This article discusses six cross-cutting themes: (a) shifting and adapting language work to ensure community health and safety, (b) building capacity to make necessary shifts and adaptations, (c) facing challenges in shifting online, (d) promoting Indigenous languages online and in community, (e) creating and sharing language resources as alternative or increased activity, and (f) (re-)envisioning language education and pedagogy in a pandemic time. These themes exemplify Indigenous persistence in Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation work during the pandemic.
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