This article examines the effect of emerging vernaculars on the social diffusion and cultural roles of standardization projects in multi‐dialectal migrant communities. I explore the impact of Standard Q'eqchi', a standard variety crafted by language activists, on Lowland Q'eqchi', a new vernacular variety of Q'eqchi' Mayan spoken in migrant rural communities in northwestern and northern Guatemala. Rather than being innovations, the sociolinguistic history of highland migrants backgrounds the social meanings associated with both varieties. The enregisterment of Lowland Q'eqchi' and Standard Q'eqchi' occurred concurrently in the lowlands, reinforcing and enabling each other. I discuss the congruent articulation of successful standardization projects with emerging local regimes of social indexicality and the way ethnic ideologies and their linguistic expression mediate changes in cultural representations of ethnicity, authority and education among the Q'eqchi' Maya. [Language ideologies, dialectology, Q'eqchi', Mayan languages, Mesoamerica]

The textual sources of indigenous Christianities in Guatemala embody a complex articulation of native thought, European language ideologies, and the diachronic development of the Christianization of different areas of Mesoamerica. The evangelization of the K'iche' became a model for the construction of pastoral Q'eqchi'. In contrast, the evangelization of the Pipil demanded substantial modifications of Mexican Nahuatl doctrinal language. Mutual intelligibility was not the only requisite to persuade and convert the natives. The local organization of speech genres and the indexical associations they effected were equally crucial. Spanish imperial designs, including Christianization, were global, but the texts that mediated them were woven with local threads. The creation of Christian registers in indigenous languages in Guatemala illustrates the confluence of coercion, resistance, and creativity behind the emergence of colonial indigenous religions.

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