36.3787, Books: Voice and Nation in Plurinational Bolivia: Swinehart (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3787. Tue Dec 09 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3787, Books: Voice and Nation in Plurinational Bolivia: Swinehart (2025)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Mara Baccaro <mara at linguistlist.org>

================================================================


Date: 09-Dec-2025
From: Lucy Trotter [lucy.trotter at bloomsbury.com]
Subject: Voice and Nation in Plurinational Bolivia: Swinehart (2025)


Title: Voice and Nation in Plurinational Bolivia
Subtitle: Aymara Radio and Song in an Age of Pachakuti
Series Title: Bloomsbury Studies in Linguistic Anthropology
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
           http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/voice-and-nation-in-plurinational-bolivia-9781350324756/

Author(s): Karl Swinehart

Paperback, ISBN: 9781350324756, Price: £28.99

Abstract:

This book offers ethnographic accounts of Aymara language media
activism in Bolivia during the presidency of Evo Morales (2006–2019).
It draws on research conducted among Aymara language radio
broadcasters, hip hop artists, and community members during a period
of radical social change and Indigenous political resurgence
(pachakuti) in South America's most Indigenous republic.
The Plurinational Republic of Bolivia counts Aymara among its official
languages, but Aymara's social status and transmission to newer
generations raise concerns about whether, despite being one of the
most widely spoken Indigenous languages of the Americas, the threat of
language obsolescence persists. This ethnographic account of
Indigenous language activism shows how Aymara media and cultural
workers combat this threat by making the language audible in diverse
corners of Aymara life and examines the role Indigenous
multilingualism plays in Bolivian politics. Through interviews and
analysis of Aymara media texts, this study shows how language
professionals determine how “the voice of the people” should sound. By
introducing neologisms and archaicisms to avoid mixing Aymara with
Spanish, Aymara language professionals disseminate a register of
dehispanicized Aymara over the airwaves. The study reveals how these
language professionals approach cultivating Aymara as more than a
question of linguistic competence, but also of political commitment
and anti-racist practice.
Organized into two sections, one on radio and one on song, and
including clear explanations and illustrations of key concepts in
linguistic anthropology, this book listens to Aymara language advocacy
from devout Catholics, union militants, and hip hop artists and fans,
who hear in their language both the past and the future of Bolivia's
Aymaras.

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     General Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics




------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3787
----------------------------------------------------------