Authenticity in language ideology

Abstract

Like many marginalized languages, Chanka Quechua (Peru) lacks community-wide prestige norms associated with standard-language ideology. Formal situations require Spanish, and few speakers are literate in Quechua, so normative speech styles are absent. Speakers’ evaluative judgments do not reference notions of correctness; rather, they value puro ‘pure’ speech and authenticity. This paper explores alternative approaches to accessing sociolinguistic judgments with a study of the variably present uvular phoneme in the past tense /–rqa/ morpheme, as exemplified in the following alternation: (1) ri-r q a-ni ~ ri-ra-ni go-pst-1sg go-pst-1sg ‘I went’ ‘I went’ To contrast speech from sociolinguistic interviews, careful, self-monitored speech is elicited through oral retelling of material presented aurally, rather than in writing. Of 38 participants, rural speakers tend to have higher rates of /q/ than urbanites and reflect idealized puro Quechua. We argue that authenticity guides variation, in place of standard language ideology.