Dually Authenticated and Doubly Modern: Institutionalizing jach maaya in the Yucatan Today

Abstract

Linguistic purist ideologies circulate widely on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Yucatec Maya speakers differentiate a "pure," "authentic" Maya located in the past from a "mixed," "corrupted" Maya located in the present. Today, the ideologically "pure," "authentic" Maya of the past, is gaining a new center of authenticity in the present through its increasing institutionalization. This project is doubly modern in its temporal rupture, which engages the past as authentic and enduring, and rupture with society, which rejects vernacular Maya for institutionally authoritative language practices, produced largely through the science of linguistics. Authenticating jach maaya today through increased institutionalization holds implications for Maya speakers' livelihoods, vernacular language practices, and understandings of Maya-ness, as well as for the future of these. [linguistic purism, institutionalization, language ideologies, Yucatec Maya, jach maaya]

Sources of convergence in indigenous languages: Lexical variation in Yucatec Maya

“…This result is in line with the lack of standardization processes in this language situation; the preference for variants of limited distribution hints to a tendency to reassert local accents; see [ 22 ]. Recall that the new wave of individuals seeking for the jach maaya ‘pure Maya’, as described in [ 44 , 45 ], predicts a tendency towards local variants. The speaker sample examined in the present study is representative for the maximally competent speakers of the sample locations, born in a period in which the language was still used by a substantial part (more that 20%) of the population in the peninsula (see percentages of the year of birth range 1906–1989 in Fig 1B ).…”

“…The representation of the indigenous language in public life changes in the recent years, with various measures towards the institutionalization of the language, e.g., the establishment of the ‘intercultural bilingual education’ program in the peninsula [ 42 : pp. 23–26] and concomitant attempts for standardization, e.g., publishing a norm for writing in 2014 [ 43 ]; see summary and evaluation of current developments in [ 44 , 45 ]. However, at least in the time of the data collection examined in this article (2000–2007), the majority of the indigenous population was not reached by these initiatives, such that the incipient standardization efforts could not yet have a serious impact on language use; see also [ 46 : p. 386] on Mayan languages in general.…”

“…Mayan people ascribe the use of jach maaya to older speakers in remote areas in the tropical forest or to the carriers of cultural heritage, e.g., to the followers of the cult of the speaking cross ( cruzo’ob ) of Quintana Roo [ 34 : p. 372] or to other carriers of prestige such as the broadcast journalists of ‘Radio Peto’. Within the recent developments of the institutionalization of the language, individuals (e.g., teachers or intellectuals) may attempt to speak jach maaya by avoiding words of Spanish origin or selecting various forms of hypercorrection (e.g., avoiding phonological processes such as contraction, which reduce the transparency of morphological structures) or by selecting particular words that are considered to be ‘authentic’ because of their origin in historical sources [ 44 ]. Crucially, jach maaya is not a standard variety that could trigger homogenization processes, but rather a folk construal motivated by purist ideologies.…”

Un encuentro con lo maya: ritualizando el reconocimiento

“…La lengua ha contribuido a una diferenciación más clara de los grupos indígenas en las universidades. Aunque, el purismo lingüístico es otra ideología que tiene implicaciones regulatorias para el habla vernácula (Rhodes 2020). Pero para crear una historia más auténtica, profesores y activistas han visto en la interculturalidad un espacio para esencializar las prácticas culturales y lingüísticas de los pueblos rurales e indígenas.…”