Multilingualism in an Intercultural University: An ethnography of linguistic and cultural diversity discourses and practices

• In Event: Linguistic Diversity: A Global Challenge for Education

Abstract

Multicultural and multilingual discourse has reached Latin American higher education through policies influenced by the transfer of European notions of bilingualism and interculturality, which, in the Mexican context are targeted nearly exclusively towards indigenous peoples, recently through innovative and often polemical “intercultural universities” (Dietz & Mateos Cortés 2011). After decades of hispanization and forced assimilation and/or uni-lateral integration first into colonial Spanish and then into mestizo Mexican society, the Mexican state now officially recognizes the indigenous languages and promotes their use in public institutions. The according trend towards diversifying the linguistic and ethno-cultural profiles of students and curricular contents coincides with a broader tendency to force institutions of higher education to become more “efficient”, “corporate” and “outcome-oriented”. This paper presents the findings of a collaborative, ethnographically-based case study of the actors participating in the configuration of one of these new institutions of higher education located at the Mexican gulf coast. Our paper examines the sometimes bilingual, sometimes multilingual teaching and learning activities carried out at the institution and contrasts them with the way it has appropriated the discourse of interculturality and bilingualism. Fieldwork, combining reflexive ethnography (Dietz 2009) with participatory and collaborative research methods (Hale 2008, Lassiter 2005), was conducted in the four indigenous regions where the institution offers a B.A. in “intercultural management for development.” Our findings illustrate new inter-lingual and intercultural communicative competences that go beyond classical indigenismo approaches of state-led integration policies towards indigenous peoples, which still prevail in official Latin American intercultural and bilingual education policies. Approximately half of the students are bilingual in Spanish and at least one of eight indigenous languages, while the other half of the students only speaks Spanish—a result of “successful” previous hispanization pressures. Classes are normally taught in Spanish, but different teaching and project activities are also carried out in the main indigenous language in the region. We highlight particularly the mutual transference, linking and hybridizing of academic knowledge, organizational knowledge and community knowledge. We are currently analyzing and comparing three closely interrelated dimensions: the “inter-cultural” dimension (the dialogue between different cultures and worldviews), the “inter-lingual” dimension (the inter-relationship between linguistic systems which have coexisted for centuries in each of these regions), and the “inter-actor” dimension ( the increasing communication between academics actors, communities and social organizations) (cf. Hornberger & Swinehart 2012). As a result of this project, concomitant curricular reforms will be developed not only for our institution, but for public Mexican universities in general, which all are facing the increasing visualization of linguistic and cultural diversity. Furthermore, our results are nurturing important policy reform proposals taken up by the federal government’s General Coordination for Intercultural and Bilingual Education (CGEIB), which feeds them back into the network of Mexican public intercultural universities.

Author

• Gunther Dietz, Universidad Veracruzana