The author presents a comprehensive look at language use and attitudes among the Kiche people of Guatemala. The book combines qualitative and quantitive analyses to test two hypotheses: (1) that K'iche' and Spanish are in a stable diglossic relationship and (2) that there is a significant relationship between language use and degree of acceptance of modern (i.e., nontraditional) identity factors in K'iche' communities. The study examines seven K'iche' communities, using the field notes and observational data collected over a two-year period. The analysis of the qualitative data follows the framework of Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory. The quantitive analysis is based on Fishman's notion of domains of use (who speaks what to whom and when). This book will appeal to sociolinguists interested in factors affecting language maintenance and shift, Mayanists who are involved in current efforts to revitalize and maintain the languages of Guatemala, and language planners and policy makers who desire to trace the outworkings of language policy decisions in an actual language-use context. M. Paul Lewis earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington D.C. He began fieldwork in Guatemala in 1975 and has worked among the K'iche', Uspanteko, and Ixil peoples in Guatemala. He was the International Sociolinguistics Coordinator, 1996-2002 and is currently an International Sociolinguistics Consultant.

K'iche': A Study in the Sociology of Language (Publications in Sociolinguistics, Vol. 6)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lewis, M Paul

Social Sciences

SIL International

How does a language community sustain their language in the face of ever-increasing forces of language shift? This volume, both a textbook and a handbook, is the result of ten years of reflection by the authors in light of SIL International's 80 years of fieldwork in local language communities. Using the Sustainable Use Model detailed here, readers learn how to advise maintaining use of their language at a sustainable level. This could include, not only the level of active literacy, but also levels of orality and identity. The book is aimed at "on the ground" workers involved with a community, to address issues arising from language and culture contact. M. Paul Lewis (Ph.D., sociolinguistics, Georgetown University) did fieldwork in Guatemala, was general editor of the Ethnologue(R), and is a Sociolinguistics Consultant with SIL. His research interests are language endangerment, language policy and planning, and language documentation. He has consulted and trained on six continents. Gary F. Simons (Ph.D., linguistics, Cornell University) is Chief Research Officer for SIL and Executive Editor of the Ethnologue(R). He was involved in language development in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, co-founder of the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC), and co-developer of the ISO 639-3 identifiers for the world's languages. "In this clearly written monograph, Lewis and Simons lay the groundwork for those who [work] with members of local language communities, to help them implement diverse activities that most effectively lead to a sustainable level of language use. They build appropriately upon the groundbreaking work that was carried out several decades ago by sociolinguists such as Charles Ferguson, Robert Cooper, and Joshua Fishman." - Adapted from the Foreword by G. Richard Tucker

Sustaining Language Use: Perspectives on Community-Based Language Development

Simons, Gary F

Anthropology

Summer Institute of Linguistics, Academic Publications

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