Nahuatl in Coatepec: Ideologies, practices and management for linguistic and cultural continuance

Abstract

Although more than a million people still speak Nahuatl, this number is rapidly diminishing. Historically, Nahuatl was the dominant language of Coatepec de los Costales, a small village in Guerrero, Mexico. The last 50 years have seen a pronounced shift there from Nahuatl to Spanish. The ultimate cause of language shift is a disruption in intergenerational language transmission as a result of often violent colonial encounters. Using a conceptual framework that combines (1) the primacy of Indigenous knowledge systems, (2) a critical sociocultural approach to language acquisition, (3) Bernard Spolsky’s definition of language policy as language practices, ideologies and management, and (4) the ethnography of language policy, this article explores, from a critical Indigenous perspective, the local dynamics and global influences that contribute to the endangerment of Nahuatl. More specifically, it examines the mechanisms through which language ideologies, family–community language management strategies and everyday language practices operate among people of different generations, thereby revealing socialisation practices and Indigenous systems of community-based learning. This work may assist other Indigenous communities in better understanding the multiple mechanisms at play in language loss and reclamation – spanning educational to environmental contexts.