The straw that broke the language's back: language shift in the Upper Necaxa Valley of Mexico
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Yvonne Lam
Abstract
This article examines the factors that have led to a shift to Spanish in the Upper Necaxa Totonac communities of east-central Mexico. Despite the fact that Spanish and Totonac have been in contact since before the eighteenth century, the shift to the majority language has only occurred in the past four decades. I will show that this shift resulted from the combination of long-standing negative attitudes towards indigenous cultures with new social and economic conditions, namely the establishment of Spanish-language schooling and a shift to a cash-based economy. The proximate cause of the linguistic “tip” to Spanish was not so much the desire to speak the majority language as the increased opportunities to do so.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- In memoriam: Alan Richard Thomas
- Introduction: a critical approach to the revitalisation of Welsh
- Code switching and the future of the Welsh language
- Bilingual literacy in and for working lives on the land: case studies of young Welsh speakers in North Wales
- Language attitudes and identity in a North Wales town: “something different about Caernarfon”?
- Accommodating “new” speakers? An attitudinal investigation of L2 speakers of Welsh in south-east Wales
- Issues of gender and parents' language values in the minority language socialisation of young children in Wales
- How green is their valley? Subjective vitality of Welsh language and culture in the Chubut Province, Argentina
- Diasporic ethnolinguistic subjectivities: Patagonia, North America, and Wales
- Commentary: the primacy of renewal
- The straw that broke the language's back: language shift in the Upper Necaxa Valley of Mexico
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- In memoriam: Alan Richard Thomas
- Introduction: a critical approach to the revitalisation of Welsh
- Code switching and the future of the Welsh language
- Bilingual literacy in and for working lives on the land: case studies of young Welsh speakers in North Wales
- Language attitudes and identity in a North Wales town: “something different about Caernarfon”?
- Accommodating “new” speakers? An attitudinal investigation of L2 speakers of Welsh in south-east Wales
- Issues of gender and parents' language values in the minority language socialisation of young children in Wales
- How green is their valley? Subjective vitality of Welsh language and culture in the Chubut Province, Argentina
- Diasporic ethnolinguistic subjectivities: Patagonia, North America, and Wales
- Commentary: the primacy of renewal
- The straw that broke the language's back: language shift in the Upper Necaxa Valley of Mexico
