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The social rôle of the indigenous languages of Mexico and Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Ramón Arzápalo
Ramón Arzápalo*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

It is the purpose of this article to show the social status of monolinguals of Indian languages in what roughly corresponds to Middle America, as well as to indicate how the salient features of interference on the Spanish spoken in that same area seem to clearly indicate a good basis for the social stratification of the people. Yucatan being the Mexican State with the highest percentage of bilinguals (even higher than Guatemala), it offers, on the one hand, an excellent example for the study of language contact, and, on the other—a field considerably neglected—the effect of this linguistic phenomenon on social stratification, together with the further biological implications it involves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Spring 1969 , pp. 133 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1969

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References

1 This is a revised form of a lecture given before the Committee on Latin American Studies at the University of Calgary on April 3, 1969.

2 After Flores, A. M., “Indian Population and its Identification” in Handbook of Middle American Indians (Edited at Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, by Wauchope, Robert et al.; Austin 1967), pp. 12–25 Google Scholar. With regard to more recent figures, see below, p. 138, n. 13.

3 Ibid.. p. 23.

4 Beals, Vide R. L., “Acculturation,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, pp. 449–68.Google Scholar

5 Rojas, A. Villa, The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 559; 1945).Google Scholar

6 Comas, J., La Antropología Social Aplicada en México: Trayectoria y Antología (México, 1964), p. 14.Google Scholar

7 M. León Portilla, “Pluralismo Cultural y Étnico en la República Mexicana,” in Ibid., p. 237.

8 This term is used here in a cultural and not an ethnic sense and applies to both mestizos and Indians who speak Spanish and are reasonably well acculturated.

9 During the period 1958-59, the Summer Institute of Linguistics published forty different primers and story booklets in twenty-four different Indian languages. Vide Boletín Indigenista, 20 (1960), p. 49.

10 After de Mendizábal, M. O., “El Origen Histórico de Nuestras Clases Medias,” in Ensayos sobre las Clases Sociales en México (México, D.F., 1968), p. 9.Google Scholar

11 “Our clear and final objective is to accelerate the development of the indigenous community, with a view to integrating it—without disrupting their own community—into the economic, cultural and political life of Mexico.” A Caso, Indigenismo (México, D.F., 1958), p. 77.

12 One, made up of non-Indians, with a complex organization and subdivided into several classes; the other, lacking social classes, with differences due only to prestige, wealth, power, and personal achievement.

13 The Statistics Department, Pan American Union (1960) gives the following figures: Total population of Mexico: 34,625,903, of which 1,652,540 are bilingual Indians, and 795,069 are monolingual Indians, Total population of Guatemala: 3,592,283, of which 1,497,261 are Indians. Vide Boletín Indigenista, 21 (1961), pp. 218-30.

14 Arzápalo, R., The ceremony of “tzicul than ti yuntziloob” at Balankanche. Transcription and Translation (Middle American Research Institute, Tulane)Google Scholar. In press.

15 de Miranda, M. T. F., “Los préstamos españoles en el zapoteco de Mitla” [Spanish borrowings in the Zapotec of Mitla”], in Anales, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 17 (1964), pp. 259–74.Google Scholar

16 First used by Uriel Weinrich, in Languages in Contact (1953), p. 1.

17 See above, p. 136, n. 8.

18 By this term is designated those socially superior to the lower middle class, but not yet of the upper middle class.

19 Roys, R. L., The Ethno-Botany of the Maya (Middle American Research Series. Pub. No. 2; New Orleans 1931), passim.Google Scholar