Articles

Linguistic Hybridity: A Case Study in the Kotiria Community

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Abstract

This article discusses language practice, ideology, and identity construction among the Kotiria (East Tukano), an indigenous people of the multilingual Vaupés region in northwestern Amazonia. Based on detailed analysis of speech from a young Kotiria girl, it presents a case study of dissonance between reported language ideology — founded on the notion of ‘linguistic loyalty’ and presumably resulting in norms of monolingual speech — and actual language practice in this region. Drawing from current sociocultural linguistic theory on code-switching and multilingualism, it concludes that the alternations observed in this sample of spontaneous and unguarded speech cannot be explained by appealing to notions of difference, but are motivated by discourse-pragmatic considerations linked to previously unidentified connections between ‘indexical ideology’ and linguistic practice. Rather than looking for a divergence explanation for language alternation, it postulates a hybrid solution that indicates the existence of an as-yet unacknowledged ‘multilingual’ speech genre. It provides both a context-specific and data-driven look at language use in the multilingual Vaupés, and offers a theoretical contribution to our more general understanding of ideology and local speech practices in multilingual contexts.

Keywords: multilingualism, language ideology, language contact, Northwest Amazon, Kotiria (Wanano)

How to Cite:

Stenzel, K. & Khoo, V., (2016) “Linguistic Hybridity: A Case Study in the Kotiria Community”, Critical Multilingualism Studies 4(2), 75-110.