XClose

UCL Institute of the Americas

Home
Menu

Seminar: Language rights and indigenous people in Peru: new articulations of hegemony?

11 May 2016, 5:30 pm–7:00 pm

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Sold out

Organiser

UCL Institute of the Americas

Location

UCL Institute of the Americas, 51 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PN

SoundCloud Widget Placeholderhttps://soundcloud.com/ucl-arts-social-science/ucl-americas-seminar-lang...

 

Rosaleen Howard (Newcastle) - Legislation and policy in support of linguistic human rights for Peru's indigenous people have gathered new momentum in the last five years. Despite repeated efforts in the last decades of the twentieth century, only now have laws been passed that officially allow indigenous languages to be spoken, and provide for use of translators and interpreters, in public service settings and other spaces of formal interaction with representatives of the state, the latter usually being monolingual speakers of Spanish.

This paper will present findings of an AHRC-funded project conducted over the last eighteen months, which looks at the actions taken by the State to implement the new laws, on the one hand, and the responses to those actions by speakers of the indigenous languages, on the other hand. We shall report on key findings in relation to the state translator-interpreter training programme, which has accredited over two hundred and fifty indigenous people, speakers of some thirty-seven different languages, as professionals in this field. We shall also examine some of the spin-offs of the training, such as the translation by the programme´s graduates, from Spanish into their native languages, of the text of the language rights law; and other actions they have taken at grassroots and regional government levels to raise public awareness of the issue of linguistic rights as a dimension of human rights.

Rosaleen Howard works on the anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics of the Andes. Her research is based on fieldwork in areas where both Spanish and Quechua are spoken (Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia). Her PhD dealt with Quechua oral storytelling in highland Ecuador. Since then she has published widely on Quechua oral history and narrative performance; anthropological approaches to the study of language contact; the grammatical marking of evidence in Quechua discourse; language politics and language policy in the Andes; language and cultural identity in the Andes; intercultural education policy for indigenous peoples. Her books include Por los linderos de la lengua. Ideologías lingüísticas en los Andes (2007, Lima: IEP/IFEA/PUCP). Her current project looks at new initiatives for the implementation of linguistic rights legislation for indigenous people in Peru, funded by the AHRC's Translating Cultures programme.

This paper is based on collaborative research with Luis Andrade, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Raquel de Pedro, Heriot-Watt University. Our Project Partners are the Indigenous Languages Division of the Viceministry of Interculturality, Ministry of Culture, and Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Peru.