The Interrelation Between Language, History, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Within the Nahuat-Pipil Context of El Salvador

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter looks at the interrelation between Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), language, and historical events within the context of the Nahuat-Pipil language of El Salvador. It deals with what some refer to as Indigenous Knowledge (IK), Traditional Knowledge (TK), or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), domains that position knowledge within broader contexts and social systems. The approaches and theories applied in this chapter are based on interactions with Indigenous people in western El Salvador from the towns of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, Nahuizalco, and Cuisnahuat where Nahuat-Pipil is most widely spoken. The research questions are a response to their specific request to conduct research on TEK, as ‘We are losing this knowledge, and without it we cannot call ourselves Indigenous’ (T. Pedro, personal communication, July 2012). Having established a baseline for understanding the motivations behind Indigenous interest in TEK, it is possible to then focus on the Nahuat-Pipil linguistic repertoire and how TEK is encoded within it. Thus, the investigation turns to the question of the ethnobiological categorization and classification of plants, how this is achieved by speakers of Nahuat-Pipil, and whether cognitive categorization strategies are reflected in the language itself. The investigation then examines folk nomenclature of plants by presenting their internal linguistic composition. The investigation of plant names is used to further inform the documentation efforts of Nahuat-Pipil by adding new focalized materials to the existing range of resources. The theoretical framework and methods employed to collect data for this body of research are interdisciplinary and draw largely upon ethnobotany, anthropology, the collection of oral histories, and sociolinguistics, in addition to my core background as a linguist and language documenter. By seeking to listen to and understand the requests of the language and speech community, this chapter thus aims to investigate how TEK informs the construction of sociocultural identity through language use, and how TEK itself is cognitively, culturally, and linguistically encoded in Nahuat-Pipil.