Parental beliefs about language acquisition and the non-transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac

December 4, 2017 6 Comments latl

Yvonne Lam

University of Alberta

Cite as: Lam, Y. (2017, December). Parental beliefs about language acquisition and the non-transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac. Paper presented at the Third UC Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages Symposium: Challenges and Benefits. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5661631

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This presentation examines the language ideologies underlying parental decisions to withhold transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac, an indigenous language of Mexico with approximately 3,200 speakers. Studies on language shift often focus on macro-social factors, such as educational policies and socioeconomic discrimination, that lead parents to value the majority language. However, these factors alone do not fully explain the non-transmission of the home language, as there are many successful examples of multilingual families. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with 12 families, I show that it is equally important to consider parental beliefs about language acquisition. Parents’ own personal experiences lead them to think that Spanish is
difficult to learn at an older age, causing them to prioritize its transmission from infancy. Furthermore, they share the common belief that the simultaneous acquisition of two languages confuses children, and they worry that learning Totonac will hinder their ability to acquire Spanish. In addition, parents hold a weak “impact belief” (De Houwer 1999) and feel incapable of influencing their children’s disinterest in speaking Totonac—further justification for not transmitting the language. It is vital to address parental beliefs about bilingual acquisition in order to encourage them to transmit Totonac alongside Spanish.
Reference:
De Houwer, Annick. 1999. “Environmental Factors in Early Bilingual Development: The Role of Parental Beliefs and Attitudes.” In Bilingualism and Migration, edited by Guus Extra and Ludo Verhoeven, 75–95. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

COMMENTS (6)

Hilde De Smedt 6 years ago

Thank you for this interesting presentation. We do have similar experiences with minority groups (migration background) in Brussels (Belgium). Parents feel unsure and wish their children to have a better future learning the majority language. We do remark differences: depending on cultural background , migration history and generation people are attached stronger or less to their first language. But when school is pushing them towards the majority language, they nearly always become unsure even when they believe in the importance of a good mother tongue. In my paper (tales at home) I describe a tool that stimulates families to communicate with each other about this ideas and feelings. In a society that is often negative concerning minority we believe strongly that families should be reinforced.

Yvonne Lam 6 years ago

Hi Hilde, I agree that it’s vital that parents reflect on their own language ideologies and practices. I’ve observed families where the parents have left the transmission of Totonac to the extended family (usually the grandparents) and opted for transmitting Spanish themselves, believing that the children will “pick up” Totonac from the environment. While that does sometimes occur (though not always), I think it sends children a negative message about the value of Totonac when their own parents have chosen not to transmit it to them.

Amy Budrikis 6 years ago

Hi Yvonne,
Great presentation – I’m also interested in De Houwer’s ‘impact belief’, so it was really interesting to see how that plays out in the Totonac families in your study.
I was thinking about your implications at the end, specifically how persuading people to value their language requires a societal change. It sounds like a bit of a ‘chicken and egg’ question – does changing society help people to value and transmit their language, or does valuing and transmitting language change society? In Australia I believe a large part of supporting Indigenous language learning comes down to helping people to see that languages aren’t something to come *after* prioritising health, well-being, education, economic security and so on – rather, learning languages will support all those things. Do you see something similar happening for Totonac?
Thanks again for a great presentation!

Yvonne Lam 6 years ago

Hi Amy: Unfortunately, I haven’t noticed this in the Totonac communities that I work with, where the concern that their children have good opportunities in life seems to override everything. I’ve certainly seen indigenous groups in Mexico, including other Totonac-speaking communities, who are actively resisting the dominant discourses. I’m still working on understanding what motivates this resistance (stronger community ties? greater socioeconomic stability? geographic isolation?). I agree that we shouldn’t have to wait for society to change, though in my case it’s been difficult persuading people that they can also change society.

Gulsah Turk 6 years ago

Thanks for this inspiring presentation. I’m currently working on a minoritized group (the Laz) in Turkey using the language ideologies framework. The macro factors they have experienced (commercialized farming and education opportunities) as well as the ideologies you mention have also come up in my study; even the quotations you share are pretty much the same as my interviews. I wonder if you also came across the discourse of nostalgia and associations of emotions with Totonac while analyzing your data. Thanks!

Yvonne Lam 6 years ago

Hi Gulash: I do have some comments in my corpus about how Totonac is the language of the community and part of the local heritage, but none of the comments expressed a particularly strong resistance to the dominant discourses that disfavour the use of Totonac, and the parents who made these comments didn’t actually transmit Totonac to their children, so I’m not sure if it was my presence as an external researcher that triggered them. I find that the discourse of nostalgia runs up against other negative discourses that, in this case, are stronger; it’s not that parents aren’t nostalgic, but that other, more immediate concerns override these emotions.

Parental beliefs about language acquisition and the non-transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac

COMMENTS (6)

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