Why X doesn’t always mark the spot: Contested authenticity in Mexican indigenous language politics
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Paja Faudree
Paja Faudree (b. 1977) is an assistant professor at Brown University 〈paja_faudree@brown.edu〉. Her research interests include language and politics, indigenous literary and social movements, the interface between music and language, and the ethnohistory of New World colonization. Her publications include “How to say things with wars: Performativity and the temporal pragmatics of power in theRequerimiento of the Spanish Conquest” (2012);Singing for the dead: The politics of indigenous revival in Mexico (2013); “The annual Day of the Dead song contest: Musical-linguistic ideologies, piratability, and the challenge of scale” (2014); and “Tales from the land of magic plants: Textual ideologies and fetishes of indigeneity in Mexico's Sierra Mazateca” (2015).
Abstract
In this article, I consider competing notions of “alphabetic authenticity” and indigenous authorship among Mexican indigenous authors and activists. Orthographies form a special focus, as choices about them entail envisioning particular kinds of texts and, hence, types of readers. I focus on the divergent strategies – all fundamentally semiotic – that people advocate in developing “authentic indigenous writing” and in using various meta-semiotic processes to harness competing authenticities to language revitalization initiatives. I suggest that the friction between these conflicting models is both contentious and generative, producing new possibilities for engagement even as the interstices between them may hide possibilities not yet explored.
About the author
Paja Faudree (b. 1977) is an assistant professor at Brown University 〈paja_faudree@brown.edu〉. Her research interests include language and politics, indigenous literary and social movements, the interface between music and language, and the ethnohistory of New World colonization. Her publications include “How to say things with wars: Performativity and the temporal pragmatics of power in the Requerimiento of the Spanish Conquest” (2012); Singing for the dead: The politics of indigenous revival in Mexico (2013); “The annual Day of the Dead song contest: Musical-linguistic ideologies, piratability, and the challenge of scale” (2014); and “Tales from the land of magic plants: Textual ideologies and fetishes of indigeneity in Mexico's Sierra Mazateca” (2015).
©2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Munich/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic and literary aspects of perspectivity
- Introduction: Linguistic and literary aspects of perspectivity
- Context-dependent vantage points in literary narratives: A functional cognitive approach
- Authorial intention and global coherence in fictional text comprehension: A cognitive approach
- The role of perspectives in various forms of language use
- From trace to topical field: Toward a linguistic definition of point of view
- Indexicals, fiction, and perspective
- Why do we accept a narrative discourse ascribed to a “third-person narrator” as true? The classical, and a cognitive approach
- De-essentializing authenticity: A semiotic approach
- Introduction: De-essentializing authenticity: A semiotic approach
- Culture as accent: The cultural logic of hijabistas
- Why X doesn’t always mark the spot: Contested authenticity in Mexican indigenous language politics
- The semiotics and politics of “real selfhood” in the American therapeutic discourse of the World War II era
- Inauthentic authenticity: Semiotic design and globalization in the margins of China
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic and literary aspects of perspectivity
- Introduction: Linguistic and literary aspects of perspectivity
- Context-dependent vantage points in literary narratives: A functional cognitive approach
- Authorial intention and global coherence in fictional text comprehension: A cognitive approach
- The role of perspectives in various forms of language use
- From trace to topical field: Toward a linguistic definition of point of view
- Indexicals, fiction, and perspective
- Why do we accept a narrative discourse ascribed to a “third-person narrator” as true? The classical, and a cognitive approach
- De-essentializing authenticity: A semiotic approach
- Introduction: De-essentializing authenticity: A semiotic approach
- Culture as accent: The cultural logic of hijabistas
- Why X doesn’t always mark the spot: Contested authenticity in Mexican indigenous language politics
- The semiotics and politics of “real selfhood” in the American therapeutic discourse of the World War II era
- Inauthentic authenticity: Semiotic design and globalization in the margins of China
