Linguistic Motherwork in the Zapotec Diaspora: Zapoteca Mothers' Perspectives on Multilingualism and Indigenous Language Maintenance

• In Event: Indigenous Mexican Families and U.S. Schools

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
This paper explores indigenous Mexican mothers’ perspectives on multilingualism and Indigenous language maintenance in their children’s lives. Drawing on interview data from a larger qualitative study of language and ideology among multilingual children in Los Angeles, California, the paper examines the linguistic ideologies and language socialization practices of four Zapotec mothers who have children in a local public school with a Spanish-English dual language program. The interview data highlight these women’s knowledge, ideologies, and language socialization practices related to multilingualism and the maintenance of Zapoteco—the Zapotec language—in the lives of their school-aged children.

Perspectives or theoretical framework
The paper builds on linguistic anthropological scholarship on language ideologies (Irvine & Gal, 2000; Kroskrity, 2004; Silverstein, 1979) in order to examine these women’s attitudes and beliefs about multilingualism and the maintenance of Zapoteco in relation to larger societal and institutional structures, processes, and discourses. In addition, the paper draws on the notion of linguistic motherwork (Ek, Sánchez, & Quijada Cerecer, 2013) to frame the ways that these Indigenous mothers’ language ideologies get embodied and enacted in their language socialization practices.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This paper focuses on data from semi-structured interviews with four mothers of Zapotec ancestry whose children attend the public school where the larger study took place. All four participants immigrated to the United States from the North Sierra region of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A total of three interviews were conducted—two individual interviews and one interview that included two different mothers. During these interviews, participants were asked specific questions about their attitudes, beliefs, and feelings about multilingualism and the maintenance of Zapoteco in their children’s lives. These video-recorded interviews were transcribed and subsequently coded inductively for emergent themes.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Data sources consist of transcripts from each of the three video-recorded semi-structured interviews.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for argument
Analysis of the data suggests that these mothers’ perspectives on multilingualism and Indigenous language maintenance get enacted in their language socialization practices. All four of these mothers reported engaging very deliberately in sustaining Zapoteco in their children’s lives in the absence of the forms of institutional support, such as dual language education, that exist for sustaining Spanish. Through various means, they exposed their children to this heritage language and they communicated to them its value and importance. These efforts are framed as “linguistic motherwork” (Ek, Sánchez, & Quijada Cerecer, 2013)—critical enactments of their language ideologies that served important language socialization functions.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study
This study contributes to our understanding of language socialization and linguistic ideologies among Indigenous Mexican families. By highlighting an under-examined population, this study also contributes to our understanding of multilingualism and multilingual families more generally. In addition, these findings help to disrupt monolithic understandings of Latinx families by highlighting Indigeneity. The paper concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications related to recognizing and incorporating the knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Mexican families in public schools.

Authors

• Ramon Antonio Martinez, Stanford University

• Melissa Mesinas, Stanford University