Language and ethnicity among the K'ichee' Maya /
"This book explores the articulation between "accent" and ethnic identification in K'ichee', a Mayan language spoken by more than one million people in the western highlands of Guatemala. Based on years of ethnographic work, it is the first anthropological examination of the...
Saved in:
| Online Access: |
Full text (MCPHS users only) |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Salt Lake City :
University of Utah Press,
2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Local Note: | ProQuest Ebook Central |
| Summary: | "This book explores the articulation between "accent" and ethnic identification in K'ichee', a Mayan language spoken by more than one million people in the western highlands of Guatemala. Based on years of ethnographic work, it is the first anthropological examination of the social meaning of dialectal difference in any Mayan language. Romero deconstructs essentialist perspectives on ethnicity in Mesoamerica and argues that ethnic identification among the highland Maya is multiple and layered, the result of a diverse linguistic precipitate created by centuries of colonial resistance. In K'ichee', dialect stereotypes--accents--act as linguistic markers embodying particular ethnic registers. K'ichee' speakers use and recombine their linguistic repertoire--colloquial K'ichee', traditional K'ichee' discourse, colloquial Spanish, Standard Spanish, and language mixing--in strategic ways to mark status and authority and to revitalize their traditional culture. The book surveys literary genres such as lyric poetry, political graffiti, and radio broadcasts, which express new experiences of Mayan-ness and anticolonial resistance. It also takes a historical perspective in examining oral and written K'ichee' discourses from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including the famous chronicle known as the Popol Vuh, and explores the unbreakable link between language, history, and culture in the Maya highlands."-- |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (144 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781607813989 160781398X 1607813971 9781607813972 |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Print version record. |
