UC Berkeley

“How do you feel when you speak Zapotec?” According to some children who are learning Zapotec, an Indigenous language spoken in Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico, speaking Zapotec invokes feelings of pride. But not all learners feel this way, and children’s feelings often vary depending on the specifics of a particular interaction. In this dissertation, I analyze how specific contexts and behaviors (of teachers, learners, parents, and other community members) increase or inhibit learners’ investment in Zapotec language learning, and as a result, their Zapotec language acquisition and use. I employ a participatory action research (PAR) framework to analyze and evaluate children’s participation in five Zapotec language workshops between 2017 and 2019 which I was involved in developing. Through examining the language use of Zapotec learners ages 4-16, it has become clear that language revitalization among children in Teotitlán is not simply about teaching children to speak Zapotec. Many children, based on observational data, already show the conversational Zapotec skills to participate in public discourse in Zapotec. Moreover, the barrier is not a lack of speakers with whom to interact, as Zapotec is spoken by about 4,000 residents and can be heard throughout the community. Rather, the issue stems from a misalignment between how children self-identify and how they perceive others to characterize them. Children want to position themselves as successful Zapotec learners and speakers but may be treated as unsuccessful speakers by others. This mismatch decreases learners' investment in using Zapotec in public spaces where the risk of misalignment between self-perception and others’ perception is especially high. Addressing this misalignment---in Teotitlán and other communities engaging in revitalization---can mitigate learners’ hesitance and promote language use.

In this dissertation, I lay out the theoretical framework used in the study, defining PAR and what learner investment means in this context (chapter 1). I then use reported language use data to describe the current status of Zapotec language use in Teotitlán (chapter 2). Through one-on-one interviews, I collected reported language use data from Zapotec learners and their parents. The interview data suggest that language shift from Zapotec to Spanish is underway, particularly among the youngest generation. However, this shift towards Spanish is not universal, and within some families and contexts, Zapotec remains robustly used.

How, then, can language revitalization initiatives be effectively implemented to further promote language use? In chapter 3, I lay out a set of factors affecting language revitalization implementation and outcomes in diverse contexts. This chapter aims to provide support to people interested in carrying out language revitalization programs by providing a framework to help identify strategies for language promotion that may be effective in a specific context. In chapter 4, I illustrate, using the Zapotec workshops as a case study, how these factors were considered in the development of a specific revitalization initiative. I also describe a sample lesson plan and key teaching strategies and learning activities used in those workshops.

To evaluate whether the language workshops had any impact on Zapotec language use among learners, I also collected data on observed language use through naturalistic recordings and participant observations (chapter 5; in referring to 'naturalistic' environments, I simply mean to say environments that are more likely to be found even when the workshops are not being held). While these data---like the reported language use data---suggest that there has been a shift towards Spanish among children in Teotitlán, children's recordings also reveal that learners are able to use Zapotec: children can be heard performing Zapotec dialogues, singing Zapotec songs, and practicing exercises like counting and naming animals in their recordings. Although Zapotec may not regularly be used between most children or between most children and adults in Teotitlán at present, these performances suggest that kids were at times interested in using Zapotec and that they do have some Zapotec language abilities. Furthermore, parents can be heard in some recordings encouraging their children’s Zapotec use, and in some instances, children responded with a code-switched utterance, using mostly Spanish but incorporating Zapotec words or phonological patterns. These behaviors show promise in the children’s openness to using the language. In addition, in all instances that I analyzed where children used Zapotec---even if it was simply one word within an otherwise Spanish utterance---parents responded in Zapotec. This suggests that one crucial aspect of building sustainable language transmission is empowering Zapotec learners to begin conversations with adults in Zapotec using any Zapotec language skills that they may have.

In chapter 6, I provide a formal evaluation of the Zapotec workshops, incorporating evidence from photovoice, a methodology for collecting participants’ opinions by inviting them to take photos representing their views on a particular topic. Finally, in chapter 7, I highlight which strategies used in the Zapotec workshops were most effective in the context of Teotitlán, as well as recommendations for best practices for language activists and revitalization practitioners in other communities who wish to leverage these tools for language promotion.