Translanguaging with Heritage Zapotec Speakers in a Community-Based Language Revitalization Study Abroad

• In Event: Translanguaging as Embodied Language Policy in Critical Inquiries about Linguistic Justice Across Generations and Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents an examination of the impact of translanguaging as language policy in a Community-based Language Revitalization program in Oaxaca, Mexico. We explore how translanguaging supported the development of critical language awareness, advancing and affirming language revitalization efforts. The project launched as a University of Colorado Boulder (CU) Education Abroad Global Seminar. The Global Seminar was facilitated trilingually in Spanish, English, and Zapotec by two CU professors, including a Zapotec speaker from Teotitlán del Valle. Oaxacan participants were heritage Zapotec speakers. CU students had diverse linguistic identities, including heritage Spanish speakers. The solidarity of taking classes and creating materials together, the diverse ages (18 to 46) and experiences of CU and Oaxacan participants, and the vulnerability of a trilingual space, resulted in unique partnership and mentorship relationships within and across the groups. This paper amplifies the power of translanguaging in the process of language revitalization and offers an examination of translanguaging as a tool for furthering indigenous language revitalization.

Theoretical framework
We build upon other community-based language revitalization projects focused on bridging the gap between documentation, materials design, and pedagogy (Hermes, Bang, & Marin, 2012), as well as study abroad programs that perhaps best serve heritage speakers (Kasun, Marks, & Jefferies, 2023). We use an interdisciplinary, ecological perspective (Hornberger & Hult, 2008) to examine how translanguaging impacts different levels of the language policy and planning process, and Ruiz’ (1984) framework of language as problem, right, and resource to examine perspectives on translanguaging within the language revitalization process.

Methods
Through interviews and participant observation, we engage in a critical ethnographic study (Fitzpatrick and May, 2022) of a community-based language revitalization project.

Data sources
Data sources include participant products from throughout the process, reflective memos of faculty members and the program assistant, participants’ co-created language materials, and interviews with CU students and community collaborators.

Results
Throughout the Community-Based Language Revitalization Global Seminar, many participants and faculty members shifted their perspectives on translanguaging, moving through the different ideological stances named by Ruíz. Initially, having three languages in the Global Seminar space, with all participants having different levels of knowledge in Zapotec, Spanish, and English, was seen as a logistical problem to be solved. By week two, participants started to see translanguaging in the Global Seminar as something that brought richness to the co-constructed space, seeing translanguaging as a resource that supported the language revitalization project. As participants engaged in the collaborative praxis of language revitalization and developed their critical language awareness, participants began to see translanguaging-being able to engage in their full linguistic repertoires-as a right.

Scholarly significance
This study affirms research on translanguaging as not just a pedagogical tool, but also an ideological stance (García & Lin, 2017). In this study, lessons from translanguaging in the Global Seminar are applied in the creation and sharing of Zapotec language materials. Through translanguaging, CU students and participants become language policymakers through the enactment of their embodied language practices and further their commitments to sustained engagement in language revitalization.

Authors

• Laura Meinzen, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Raichle Farrelly, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo, University of Colorado - Boulder