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The purpose of this paper is to underline the implications that language endangerment has, not only for the speakers of a specific language, but for the entire world as losing a language involves the disappearance of cultural, spiritual and intellectual knowledge as well as cultural identity. Many indigenous languages in Mexico, for example, have been in danger as Spanish, the dominant language of the country, has put them at a disadvantage. Transitional bilingual education has been used to achieve such a goal. Since this has been the case, some indigenous communities have taken the initiative to work diligently to preserve and promote their native language and culture despite the sociopolitical, economic and educational pressures they face. An example of that is the Mayan Tsotsil community in Chiapas in southern Mexico. This paper offers a summary of the findings of the qualitative research study that was conducted to explore the situation of the Tsotsil language at a Spanish-Indigenous Tsotsil elementary bilingual school in Chiapas. Tsotsil children and their teacher show that it is possible to preserve and promote the Tsotsil language when working together as a community. It is concluded that quality bilingual education and inclusive schools can be great tools that can contribute to have a harmonious and peaceful world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present the social and stylistic variation in the speech prosody of the Spanish of Mérida, Yucatán. Assertive utterances from sociolinguistic interviews and discourse completion tasks are analyzed considering the social variables of age, gender and educational level. The prosodic analysis is carried out within the Autosegmental Metrical model (Pierrehumbert 1980, Ladd 2008) and with the Sp_ToBI labeling conventions (Hualde & Prieto 2015). The results show that this variety of Spanish is characterized by a prominent descent starting from the first tonal peak, the early-peak alignment in some prenuclear positions, and the presence of some non-falling boundary tones. The social and stylistic variation suggests that the last two are features that indicate vernacularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín de Filología is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines how implied speaker nationality, which serves as a proxy for bilingual/monolingual status, influences social perception and linguistic evaluation. A modified matched-guise experiment was created with the speech of eight bilingual U.S. Spanish speakers from Texas talking about family traditions; the speech stimuli remained the same, but the social information provided about the speakers–whether they were said to be from Mexico (implied monolingual) or from Texas (implied bilingual)–varied. Based on 140 listeners' responses (77 L2 Spanish listeners, 63 heritage Spanish listeners), quantitative analyses found that overall listeners evaluated 'Mexico' voices as more able to teach Spanish than 'Texas' voices. However, only heritage listeners perceived 'Mexico' voices as being of higher socioeconomic status and of more positive social affect than 'Texas' voices. Qualitative comments similarly found that heritage listeners evaluated 'Mexico' voices more favorably in speech quality and confidence than 'Texas' voices. The implications are twofold: (i) the social information of implied monolingualism/bilingualism influences listeners' social perceptions of a speaker, reflecting monoglossic language ideologies; and (ii) there exists indeterminacy between language and social meaning that varies based on differences in lived experiences between L2 and heritage Spanish listeners. Extending on previous findings of indeterminacy between linguistic variants and meaning, the current study shows this also applies to (implied) language varieties, demonstrating the role of language ideologies in mediating social perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín de Filología is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper exposes the linguistic rights situation in Mexico. To help the reader understand the linguistic rights conditions of the country, the article offers an overview of the languages of the country and their social conflict; the language policy; and the factors that have contributed to the survival of indigenous languages. In particular, the paper emphasises the fact that even though it could be argued that the process to achieve the fully exercise of linguistic rights by indigenous people has started, there are important issues that urge to be addressed by the Mexican government and society with regard to discrimination towards indigenous people. The study suggests actions to be taken in two fronts: 1) the need of sociolinguistic awareness in education; and 2) the activation of mass sensitivity and empathy towards indigenous people through the media, bringing the negative stereotype of indigenous people to a halt on television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although an increasing number of sociolinguistic researchers consider functions of voice qualities as stylistic features, few studies consider cases where voice qualities serve as the primary signs of speech registers. This article addresses this gap through the presentation of a case study of Lachixío Zapotec speech registers indexed though falsetto, breathy, creaky, modal, and whispered voice qualities. I describe the system of contrastive speech registers in Lachixío Zapotec and then track a speaker on a single evening where she switches between three of these registers. Analyzing line-by-line conversational structure I show both obligatory and creative shifts between registers that co-occur with shifts in the participant structures of the situated social interactions. I then examine similar uses of voice qualities in other Zapotec languages and in the two unrelated language families Nahuatl and Mayan to suggest the possibility that such voice registers are a feature of the Mesoamerican culture area. (Voice quality, register, performance, metapragmatics, Mesoamerica, Zapotecan, Mayan, Nahuatl) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]