Linguistic Registers and Citizenship Education: Divergent Approaches to Content, Instruction, Kichwa Use, and State Relationships in Ecuador’s Intercultural Bilingual Education

Abstract

Indigenous education increasingly seeks to reclaim the institutions of state assimilation as spaces for the dissemination and support of localized forms of knowledge and language use and the valorization of alternative citizenship identities. In this study, I compare two schools in Ecuador to show how divergent ways of teaching Kichwa promote or reject state policies of language standardization and the kinds of citizens foregrounded by them. By comparing the schools’ approaches to teaching Kichwa, I call attention to linguistic registers as they carry out or contest predominant forms of citizenship. These examples provide a pathway to study inclusive language policies and classrooms and to understand the multiplicity of ways that citizenship manifestsin communication.