| This dissertation examines the relationship between language and collective identities in post-conflict Guatemala. I undertake this investigation through a focus on language ideologies, meaning, the culturally and historically specific construals of language that shape and are shaped by consciousness and lived social relations. I show how various indexical relations (such as Spanish as an index of Guatemalan national identity, Spanish as an index of "the modern," Mayan languages an as index of Maya identity, Mayan languages as an index of "tradition") are ideologically created, re-created, and contested in public discourse. I also show how language ideologies circulating in public discourse function to fix groups of people and language varieties into seemingly discrete ontological entities including "Guatemalan," "Indian," "Maya," "traditional," "modern" and "linguist.";The investigation of the ways in which significations of Spanish and Mayan languages, particularly Kaqchikel, are mapped on to collectivities occurs at two different sites. At the site of metalinguistic discourse, my investigation of the relationship between language ideology and collective identities is carried out on three levels: official state metalinguistic discourse; Maya intellectuals' oppositional metalinguistic discourse; and the metalinguistic discourses of some "ordinary" Maya citizens from the department of Chimaltenango. At the site of language regimentation, I examine the scholarly representations of Mayan languages by various "experts" including North American missionaries/linguists, North American secular linguists, and Maya linguists. I analyze how the construction of linguistic sameness/difference impacts the creation of social sameness and difference in the formation of the "public," a changing literate readership, and the national "imagined community."... |
