Storytelling, Language Shift, and Revitalization in a Transborder Community: “Tell It in Zapotec!”

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, I examine storytelling practices in a Zapotec transborder community formed by migration between Oaxaca, Mexico, and Los Angeles, California. Amid dual patterns of language shift away from Zapotec toward Spanish among community youth living on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, there is a growing gap between storytelling ideologies that tightly link storytelling to Zapotec language use and the practices of storytellers, who increasingly use Spanish. As a discursive genre that is linked to processes of cultural reproduction, storytelling has particular significance for understanding language shift in this community. In this article, I demonstrate how speakers’ ideologies about how stories should be told are shaped by a widespread preoccupation with cultural continuity amid the transformations brought on by local migration practices. The varied responses to this transformation within the community, which range from acceptance to cultural revitalization activism, reflect distinct but overlapping ideologies of discursive authenticity as well as the role of traditional heritage language practices in contemporary social life.