Linguistic Natures: Method, Media, and Language Reclamation in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract

In Napo, Ecuador, many speakers experience the use of the standardized variety Kichwa Unificado in formal education and other forms of institutional language revitalization to be a serious imposition upon their regional varieties of Kichwa. This article explores the assumptions about the nature of language-or what have been called ontologies of language (Hauck and Heurich 2018; Ferguson 2019)-that shape responses to language revitalization in Napo. At stake in debates over language standardization are fundamental assumptions of the nature of language and its connection to personhood. Grassroots Amazonian Kichwa media focused on "listening" and "remembering," reveal the importance of not only ideological clarification (Kroskrity 2009), but also ontological clarification in language revitalization and advocacy. [ontologies of language, linguistic ideological assemblages, language standardization, language revitalization, Indigenous media]

Language otherwise: Linguistic natures and the ontological challenge

“…Finally, how languages are connected to nonhumans, to the land, or to personhood may have important implications for language pedagogy, revitalization, and reclamation. Indeed, the “decontextualizable nature of language” implied in linguistic documentation, focusing on orthography and dictionary development, contrasts markedly with Indigenous understandings of language “as essentially connected to places and people” (Ennis 2021, 320). Bernard Perley (2012, 146) aptly criticizes what he calls “zombie languages,” i.e., Indigenous languages that only exist in an undead state in the form of recordings and documentary artefacts but disembodied and disconnected from their community of speakers.…”

“…As Perley (2011, 145) emphasizes, language death itself implies ontological change 7 . Revitalization initiatives need to take ontologies of language into account, not merely to preempt disjunctures between different stakeholders (Ennis 2021), but also because recognizing how language is embedded in encompassing ontological frameworks may help their valorization and reappropriation (High 2018). Among the Sakha, for instance, in school curricula children are taught about the importance of respectfully addressing other people, other beings, and aspects of nature in Sakha, and treating the Sakha language itself with respect, which has contributed to its relative vitality (Ferguson 2019, 99, 276).…”

Afecto y modalidad en la revalorización lingüística del kichwa del Alto Napo

“…Muchas personas en Napo asocian la educación intercultural bilingüe con una política de estandarización de la lengua por el uso escrito del kichwa unificado. Esto sucede igualmente en la dimensión oral de la lengua, en los espacios y comunicaciones públicas (Ennis, 2020;Wroblewski, 2012). Debido a sus potencialidades multimodales y polifónicas, los medios de comunicación local de Napo intervienen en este contexto complejo de opresión lingüística esperado e inesperado.…”