Voices silenced by written texts: indigenous languages encountering standardization

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines ways in which Indigenous teachers and students draw on diverse language repertoires while deciphering, writing, and translating texts in multilingual educational spaces. Recent normalization of orthographies tends to homogenize indigenous languages in Mexico, while silencing and excluding actual language repertoires, thus reproducing the colonial asymmetry that has privileged Spanish only in public domains. The authors draw on data from three multilingual settings to compare languaging practices surrounding work with texts. Analysis reveals the multivocality that surfaces in speech and offers insights into the power of orality to counter the dominance of standardized spellings and meanings. Attention to oral polysemy leads students and teachers to question the standardized versions and determine better ways to render in writing their own heterogeneous language repertoires for local use.