Language Rights and Indigenous Languages: A Critical View from Latin America

Zavala V. · Word (2020) · DOI: 10.1080/00437956.2020.1815946

Resumen

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.

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú