Title
Language Rights and Indigenous Languages: A Critical View from Latin America
Other title
Derechos lingüísticos y lenguas originarias: una mirada crítica desde América Latina
Date Issued
01 January 2020
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Taylor and Francis Ltd.
Abstract
In this article, I discuss the paradigm of language rights in light of the situation of indigenous languages in the current context of Latin America. Based on my ethnographic research in Peru with young proponents of Quechua in urban areas, I propose to rethink five issues that stem from the rights approach: (1) The link between language and territory, (2) The link between language, culture, and identity, (3) The right to language as distinct from the right to social (and economic) justice, (4) The visibility of conflicts between languages and the invisibility of those thriving within languages, and (5) The evaluation of speakers based on their command of “a language” and not in “language.” The aim of the article is not to condemn the rights paradigm, but to make it more complex on the basis of the current situation of indigenous languages and recent developments in the field of critical sociolinguistics. In today's world, the abstract and dehistoricized reasoning of the language rights paradigm does not seem to be contributing to the development of minoritized languages nor, least of all, to the emancipation of those it supposedly benefits.
Start page
341
End page
358
Volume
66
Issue
4
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Lingüística
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85096985045
Source
Word
ISSN of the container
00437956
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus