“I Don’t Want Them to Be like Me”: Discourses of Inferiority and Language Shift in Upper Necaxa Totonac

Abstract

Abstract:This study examines the language ideologies behind the shift away from the use of Upper Necaxa Totonac, an indigenous language of Mexico. Five themes characterize the discourses of the first generation of parents who socialized their children to use Spanish, the majority language, as the everyday language of communication: preoccupation with their children’s future, an unfavorable view of indigenous identity, the association of the past with suffering, concern about their children’s proficiency in Spanish, and the inability to force children to learn the indigenous language. These discourses reveal an ideology that views being indigenous as inferior, leading parents to eschew the transmission of their language.