Research

Language Ideologies and Language Vitality

Huehuetla, Puebla, Mexico, November 2016

Totonacan Languages and Huehuetla Totonac

The Totonacan language family is a group of languages spoken by approximately 278, 000 people in the states of Hidalgo, Puebla, and Veracruz in Mexico (INEGI 2020). The family consists of two main branches, Totonac and Tepehua. Within the Totonac branch, four sub-branches are currently recognized—Misantla, Northern, Sierra, and Lowland—with the latter three being more closely related and grouped together as Central Totonac (Brown et al. 2011: 333). Within Central Totonac, mutual intelligibility across the separate branches—Northern, Sierra and Lowland—is low due to lexical, morphological, and phonological differences (Beck to appear). However, Sierra and Lowland varieties are more closely related to each other than to Northern (Brown et al. 2011: 333–334). Research is still needed to establish the number of distinct Totonac languages and estimates range from a low of three up to possibly 20 (Brown et al. 2011: 334–335).

Huehuetla Totonac is part of the Sierra branch, which has some distinct linguistic characteristics, including significant changes in inflectional morphology and lexicon. In addition, some Sierra varieties are distinguished by marked prosodic effects at phrasal boundaries (Beck to appear; Levy 2015; Román Lobato 2008). There is also significant variation within the Sierra branch, and neighbouring communities a few kilometers apart can have unique lexical items and phonological patterns (Beck to appear). For example, Huehuetla Totonac, Olintla, and Coatepec all lack laryngealization on vowels, which is present in other Totonac languages (Brown et al. 2011: 337; Troiani 2004). Mutual intelligibility, though not necessarily easy, seems to be possible in most Sierra varieties despite this. Speakers from Coatepec in the western Sierra can speak with but are not entirely at ease with those from Chumatlán, which is located about 60 kilometers by road to the northeast of Coatepec (Beck p.c.). Huehuetla is located roughly between these two communities. While some speakers downplay variation (Beck p.c.), some people have told me they can identify speakers from neighboring communities based on linguistic characteristics of the varieties of Totonac. Much work remains to do on the linguistic and sociolinguistic variation of the Sierra Totonac languages.

Día de los muertos altar on November 2, 2016

Christmas procession of the Indigenous preschool in December 2016

Language Ideologies and Language Vitality in Huehuetla

My findings show that in Huehuetla, the mainstream or dominant ideology divides Totonac and non-Indigenous identities, including along linguistic lines. This ideology equates speaking Huehuetla Totonac with being Totonac, and speaking Spanish with being non-Indigenous. It also implies that multilingualism is problematic or inauthentic because of this exclusive binary positioning. This ideology of iconicization between language and identity can be described using the concept of “essentialism,” an anthropological term that refers to overgeneralization and naturalization of the relationship between the characteristics of people, such as their language, and their supposed natural essence or identity (Bucholtz and Hall 2004: 370). We know the equation between language and identity is an oversimplification because people’s language use and identity are contextual social processes (Bucholtz and Hall 2005). The essentialist ideology presumes discrete categorization of languages and identities, which intersects with other ideologies. For example, the assumption that languages are bounded supports the hierarchical positionings of these languages and identities (Gal 1998). In Huehuetla, there are multiple essentialist ideologies that are recursively linked and reinforce each other: Huehuetla Totonac is positioned as inferior to Spanish, and Totonac speakers are positioned as inferior to Spanish speakers. I explore the multiple ways that this recursive, hierarchical ideology of essentialism is seen in the discourse and the linguistic ecology.

In addition to the essentialist ideology, some local ideologies take a more syncretic or pragmatic position. “Syncretism” is another term that comes from sociocultural anthropology, where it has been used to describe the process of incorporating religious and cultural practices from distinct traditions (Droogers 2011). Linguistic anthropologists also use the term syncretism to describe the lack of marking of linguistic and sociolinguistic structures as distinct categories, such as in Hill and Hill’s study of a Mexicano language (Malinche Nahuatl) that incorporates Spanish (Hill and Hill 1986: 57). In this study, I use the concept of syncretism to describe how some community members in Huehuetla not only merge languages, but also identities. I show how this merging of languages and identities is performed in diverse ways depending on context, revealing that a syncretic ideology exists along with the essentialist ideology that equates language and identity. These syncretic practices in Huehuetla can be seen as an example that illustrates how identity and language are processes or things that people do, rather than things that they are or have, constructed in and through interaction on multiple scales (Bucholtz and Hall 2005). The syncretic language ideology observed in Huehuetla resists the recursive hierarchical positioning of Huehuetla Totonac and Spanish as exclusive languages and Indigenous or non-Indigenous as exclusive identities. Exploring how the syncretic ideology operates simultaneously and in opposition to the essentialist ideology is key for understanding how people value and use their languages in their daily lives, which I use as to inform my analysis of language vitality in Huehuetla and of language vitality as a theoretical concept.