https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2676-0254
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ABSTRACT
This article examines ways in which Indigenous teachers and students draw on diverse language repertoires while deciphering, writing, and translating texts in multilingual educational spaces. Recent normalization of orthographies tends to homogenize indigenous languages in Mexico, while silencing and excluding actual language repertoires, thus reproducing the colonial asymmetry that has privileged Spanish only in public domains. The authors draw on data from three multilingual settings to compare languaging practices surrounding work with texts. Analysis reveals the multivocality that surfaces in speech and offers insights into the power of orality to counter the dominance of standardized spellings and meanings. Attention to oral polysemy leads students and teachers to question the standardized versions and determine better ways to render in writing their own heterogeneous language repertoires for local use.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Isabelle Léglise, Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta, and Ana Deumart for including our article in the Special Issue. As well as the two blind reviewers for their encouraging and helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Mexico unlike other nations does not have a system of indigenous reservations. Among those excluded are the many internal/transnational migrants with many children speakers of different indigenous languages.
3 Nahuatl is of the Yuto-Nahua language family, Ch’ol is a Highland Mayan language and Chinantec is Otomanguean. Nahuatl and Ch’ol had sophisticated pre-Hispanic writing systems and were transcribed with the Latin alphabet on the arrival of the Spaniards.
4 All citations are from fieldwork registered, transcribed, and translated to English by Rebolledo-Angulo.
5 Fragment of a lesson on September 22, 2011, audiotaped, transcribed, and translated to English by Rebolledo-Angulo. In this case, the terms that students searched in the dictionary are left in Spanish, in italics, to convey the difficulties of the task. Transcription code includes colon (:) for introducing direct speech, parentheses for comments and translation of Chinantec or Spanish words, repeated colons indicating elongated vowel sounds, and ellipsis points indicating pauses.
6 Chinantec does not distinguish between /rr/ and /r/, which do have phonemic value in Spanish.
7 This process was recorded during 2010–2012 by Ayala-Reyes in her field diary, covering discussions with these teachers on the course syllabus and teaching materials.
8 Ayala-Reyes, fieldnotes. The anthology was proposed in mid-2010 and during the 2010–2011 schoolyear, the teachers used versions of the Ch’ol texts with students to see if they were understood and collected their illustration. Ayala-Reyes observed some of these classes. From mid-2011 to 2012, Ayala-Reyes collaborated in translating the texts into Spanish.
9 These discussions took place in the teachers' meetings recorded in Ayala-Reyes field notes of 12, 13, 14 October and 16, 17, 18 November 2011.
10 Citations are from: Ramos, interview by Rockwell, April 15th, 2022, transcribed and translated by the author. Comments and translations are placed in parentheses.
11 In Spanish the verb querer means both to want something or to want to do something, and to love something or someone, therefore the laughter, but the Mexicano word only means the former.
12 In Spanish this word appears only once in the verse.
13 Translated from the transcript of a workshop session recorded on April 14th, 2022, by the Rockwell. Mexicano words are in italics, and English is translation of original Spanish. Comments are placed in parentheses, three ellipsis points [ … ] indicate pauses, and bracketed ellipsis points [… ..] indicate omitted speech.
14 Summarized from an interview with Ramos Rosales, by Rockwell, April 15th, 2022
15 The letter h was used by writers of Nahuatl during the Colonial years and has endured in many texts, names, and Nahuatl loan-words in Spanish.
16 Aguilar, Yásnaya. 2022. “Hablar como acto de resistencia.” Blog Este país, March 17. (Originally published on July 17, 2015). Available at: https://estepais.com/blogs/ayuujk/hablar-acto-resistencia/
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Notes on contributors
Susana Ayala-Reyes
Susana Ayala-Reyes is an anthropologist and linguist and holds a PhD in Educational Research. She is professor at the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Mexico and has done research among Highland Mayas, as well as in Indonesia and at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin. She works on narrative, discourse analysis, gesture and communication in multilingual educational processes.
Valeria Rebolledo-Angulo
Valeria Rebolledo-Angulo is a social anthropologist and holds a PhD in Educational Research. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Buenos Aires and a postdoctoral fellow at the National Pedagogical University and now works in teacher training and curriculum development. Her research has centred on sociocultural and linguistic conditions and educational practices in rural indigenous schools.
Elsie Rockwell
Elsie Rockwell studied History and Anthropology and holds a PhD in Educational Research. She is Emeritus professor at the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Mexico and has received the Spindler Award from the Council of Anthropology and Education. Much of her research has centred on school cultures and literacy, past and present, in Mexico and France.