[EDLING:701] Brownbag Discussion with Inge Sichra

[Tamara Warhol]

The Educational Linguistics Forum (ELF)
presents a Brownbag Discussion:

Transcending or Strengthening Quechua¡¯s Emblematic Value:
Language Identity in Cochabamba
by

Inge Sichra, PhD
Universidad Mayor de San Simo'n
Cochabamba, BOLIVIA

Friday, March 18, 2005
12:00-1:30pm, GSE Rm 400

Please bring your own lunch

Abstract: This work begins by presenting a sociolinguistic panorama of Bolivia
(Andean languages, especially Quechua) and of the city of Cochabamba with data
from the last censuses.  Besides reproducing the widely-known characteristic of
the country¡¯s indigenous majority, the city of Cochabamba bears the trait of
being tenaciously and persistently bilingual in spite of the constant
displacement of indigenous languages by Spanish: both in the city and in the
country as a whole.  The second part considers three life stories in order to
analyze different adaptation strategies of Quechua to an urban space: both in
terms of the functionality of the language, and of the identity speakers assign
to it and to themselves as bilingual individuals in a milieu of diglossia. The
work questions linguistic and academic assumptions that a native language needs
to be modernized and to overcome diglossia in order to have a future.  The talk
concludes that the permanence of the native language in the city of Cochabamba
is not necessarily ensured by modernizing it, for even people with a high level
of linguistic awareness and loyalty prioritize traditional cultural referents to
innovative, followed by ideological referents. The need to overcome social
spheres, historically established for indigenous languages in the urban circle,
is not clearly perceived.



For more information about ELF, please visit
http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~pennelf


--
Tamara Warhol
PhD Student
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
warholt at dolphin.upenn.edu