Speaking for a State: Standardized Kichwa Greetings and Conundrums of Commensuration in Intercultural Ecuador

Abstract

Can Indigenous language use transform state politics? In Ecuador, speakers of Kichwa (Ecuadorian Quechua) head a national, intercultural bilingual school system that promotes and teaches Indigenous languages. In their professional roles, they give speeches during which they speak as national state agents. Most commonly, they begin such events by using standardized Kichwa to greet and welcome attendees and then switch to Spanish. Although brief, such greetings serve to mark the state as intercultural. However, they also make Kichwa commensurate with Spanish. Speakers encounter a conundrum in how more extensive or illegible Kichwa speech may not demonstrate a modernist, commensurate form of Kichwa for non-Indigenous-identifying addressees and may even trigger anxiety or censure from Ministry of Education higher-ups. Yet, Kichwa state agents simultaneously risk angering Kichwa-speaking addressees with intralinguistic shift and restricting a movement to reclaim a language to curtailed speech acts within extensive non-Kichwa (Spanish) speech, further prioritizing that language and addressees who speak it. Their dilemmas indicate the challenges of language standardization in recognition politics and illustrate how semiotic processes of entextualization and enregisterment are integral to commensuration.

Linguistic Registers and Citizenship Education: Divergent Approaches to Content, Instruction, Kichwa Use, and State Relationships in Ecuador’s Intercultural Bilingual Education

“…We coauthored the book to teach Kichwa in a register more closely resembling how parents speak and to increase awareness for the challenges of standardizing Indigenous languages. My previous research had also found that Unified Kichwa was prolific in the school system’s materials (e.g., Limerick, 2018, 2020, in press). The total number of hours I have spent at the first school thus far exceeds those at the second school.…”

“…These forms of Kichwa, paradoxically, foreground non-Kichwa-speaking audiences and include Unified Kichwa greetings that the students themselves may not understand. Such ways of communicating are similar to how national bilingual education directors speak as they gain rights and recognition in intercultural citizenship (Limerick, in press). This form of multiculturalism has tended to necessitate making Indigenous citizens more like those who do not identify as Indigenous and Kichwa analogous to standardized Ecuadorian Spanish.…”

¿Pueden utilizarse las instituciones estatales para reivindicar los idiomas indígenas?

“…Los directores de la educación bilingüe han sido criticados por maestros y padres de familia por utilizar en gran medida breves saludos en kichwa antes de pasar a hablar en español. Como he detallado en otro lugar (Limerick, 2020), estas aperturas estandarizadas en kichwa consisten en híbridos léxico-sintácticos, calcos. Son palabras kichwas pero traducidas de la gramática, la referencia y el uso del español, y sustituyen a formas de hablar más locales.…”

“…Este modelo de interculturalidad -la forma predominante de multiculturalismo en Ecuadorimplica hacer que la mayoría no se sienta excluida o incómoda mediante un 6. Esta evidencia también aparece en Limerick (2020).…”

Espacios ideológicos/de implementación en la planificación y política lingüística de la era COVID

“…(i) n los actos públicos, los profesores y directores de la educación intercultural bilingüe (EIB) suelen utilizar un registro estandarizado del kichwa, que Nicholas conceptualiza como una forma común de hablar autorizada por el Estado, por ejemplo, al utilizar saludos emblemáticos del kichwa, como alli puncha, análogo al español "buenos días", pero que la mayoría de los hablantes describen como extraño, o al utilizar formas que aparecen en la Constitución para describir la diversidad lingüística y cultural del Ecuador (Limerick, 2020b). (ii)…”