U T’aan Nukuch Máak (‘Words of the Elders’): Defining a Yucatec Maya ‘Speech’ Genre

Abstract

Yucatec Maya orality has been a popular topic of study of scholars from a wide array of disciplines. These studies often rely on academically generated categories of speech that have often been stylized in forms that descend from Western thought. The generated speech categories may overlook more performance-based forms that are more common of Indigenous knowledge systems. Most of the collected and analyzed Maya oral literature appears to be recounted by men, leaving women’s orality and their unique ways of interpreting the world largely under-documented. In this paper, I expand our understanding of Yucatec Maya women’s oral literature by providing a systematic documentation and description of u t’aan nukuch máak, words of the elders, a ‘speech’ genre that relies largely on performance. The performance of u t’aan nukuch máak are an embodiment of my female collaborators’ culture, as they occur in their daily routines. U t’aan nukuch máak are performed (or uttered) in the context of certain bodies, objects, times, and spaces that index concepts that reflect the strength of Maya cultural memory.