LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL PRACTICE: DECONSTRUCTING BOUNDARIES IN INTERCULTURAL BILINGUAL EDUCATION

Virginia Zavala

doi:10.1590/010318138653255423542

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although Peru’s Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) program has been attempting to pursue new directions, it still carries many ideologies and practices that have defined it since it started half a century ago. In this article, I discuss the way some of these ideologies and practices related to language are reproduced in a preservice teacher training program in one of the capital city’s private universities, which implements a national policy of social inclusion for Quechua-speaking youth from vulnerable contexts. On the basis of diverse dichotomies (L1/L2, Spanish use/Quechua use, Spanish literacy practices/Quechua literacy practices, Quechua speaker/Spanish speaker), the program produces two types of hierarchized subjectivities: one related to the subject educated in Quechua and another related to the subject educated in Spanish, both coming from a conception of languages as discrete codes that go together with fixed ethnolinguistic groups and bounded cultural practices (GARCÍA et al., 2017). In the context of new sociocultural dynamics and bilingualisms, young students in the program subvert these divisions and begin to trace new paths for IBE and Quechua in Perú.

Highlights

The increment of new communication technologies, the intensification of transnational flows, and the linguistic changes brought forward by globalization are part of social life in the 21st century
In the face of this, a new sociolinguistics of multilingualism is being forged (MARTIN-JONES & MARTIN, 2017): one that problematizes taken for granted categories and no longer considers that languages are bounded entities, identities are stable, and communities are homogeneous (HELLER, 2007; MAKONI & PENNYCOOK, 2006; GARCÍA, 2009)
I will look at a preservice teacher education program in Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in the city of Lima in order to address how multiple and competing language ideologies about Quechua are simultaneously at work in relation to different conceptualizations of language, language boundaries, and speakers

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The increment of new communication technologies, the intensification of transnational flows, and the linguistic changes brought forward by globalization are part of social life in the 21st century This new scenario has led to tensions and challenges for multilingualism in indigenous contexts with regard to how languages are understood (PIETIKÄINEN et al, 2016). After two years of fieldwork, I found that the institution regulates specific language ideologies and practices, which involve dividing or compartmentalizing the languages, the texts, the discourse genres, and the literacy practices in relation to Quechua and Spanish As a consequence, it produces two types of hierarchical subjectivities: one linked to the subject educated entirely in Quechua and another to the subject educated entirely in Spanish, within a conception of languages as separate codes that are related to fixed ethnolinguistic groups and bounded cultural practices (GARCÍA et al, 2017). Dossiê of new subjectivities (VALDÉS, 2017), and begin to trace new paths for IBE and Quechua in Perú

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL PRACTICE

METHODOLOGY

Findings

THE PROGRAM