Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 491

Part of Session 142: Deconstructing the urban-rural dichotomy (Other abstracts in this session)

Working the Sociolinguistic Borderlands--Space, Time, and Place in Indigenous Language Planning in the U.S. Southwest

Authors: McCarty, Teresa; Romero-Little, Mary Eunice
Submitted by: McCarty, Teresa (Arizona State University, United States of America)

This paper pushes beyond the binaries of space (local-global), time (elder-younger), and place (urban-rural) to examine language loss and recovery within the sociolinguistic borderlands of the southwestern United States. A borderlands conception recognizes movement across multi-planes of space, time, and place, acknowledging shape-shifting identities within local and global linguistic ecologies (Appadurai, 2001; Canagarajah, 2005), overlaps and fissures among generations of speakers (Romero-Little, Ortiz, & McCarty, 2011), and the simultaneity of transmigration and rootedness of peoples within histories of places (Feld & Basso, 1998; Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2008). Drawing on ethnographic and sociolinguistic data from Navajo, Pueblo, and Yuman language communities, the paper first contextualizes the current situation of language loss and recovery within reservation-town-cityscapes and among multi-generations of speakers and language learners. Focusing on youth language practices, ideologies, and communicative repertoires, the paper then provides a comparative analysis across these language communities, illuminating the ways in which intergenerational, space-and-place crisscrossing social networks serve as agents of both language reclamation and change. This analysis positions youth as social agents who physically and symbolically navigate dynamic and multiple sociolinguistic borders (Bucholtz & Skapoulli, 2009). How do youth negotiate Indigenous place-based knowledges and values (e.g., reciprocity, contribution) across social networks and spaces? How are their language practices and ideologies configured in this borderland space? What insights does this analysis reveal for youth’s ability to “bring their languages forward” (Hornberger & King, 1996), while accessing languages of wider communication? The paper concludes by drawing out theoretical implications for (re)imagining sociolinguistic spaces, places, and temporal frames (Blommaert, 2010), and the grounded realities of Indigenous language planning within complex and ever-changing sociolinguistic borderland ecologies.

References Cited

Appadurai, A. (ed.) (2001). Globalization. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bucholtz, M., & Skapoulli, E. (2009). Youth language at the intersection: From migration to globalization. Pragmatics, 19(1), 1-16.

Canagarajah, A. S. (ed.) (2005). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Feld, S., & Basso, K. (eds.) (1998). Senses of place. Santa Fe, NM: School for American Research Press.

Hornberger, N. H., & King, K. A. (1996). Bringing the language forward: School-based initiatives for Quechua language revitalization in Ecuador and Bolivia. In N. H. Hornberger (ed.), Indigenous literacies in the Americas: Language planning from the bottom up (pp. 299-319). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Levitt, P., & Glick Schiller, N. (2008). Conceptualizing simultaneity: A transnational social field perspective on society. In S. Khagram & P. Levitt (eds.), The transnational studies reader: Intersections and innovations (pp. 284-294). New York: Routledge.

Romero-Little, M. E., Ortiz, S. J., & McCarty, T. L., with Chen, R. (eds.) (2011). Indigenous languages across the generations – Strengthening families and communities. Tempe: Arizona State University Center for Indian Education.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Working the Sociolinguistic Borderlands--Space, Time, and Place in Indigenous Language Planning in the U.S. Southwest