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Language and Ethnicity Among the K'ichee' Maya

By (author) Sergio Romero

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This book explores the articulation between â€œaccentâ€ and ethnic identification in Kâ€™icheeâ€™, a Mayan language spoken by more than one million people in the western highlands of Guatemala. BasedÂ on years of ethnographic work, it is the first anthropological examination of the social meaning of dialectal difference in any Mayan language. Romero deconstructs essentialist perspectives on ethnicity in Mesoamerica and argues that ethnic identification among the highland Maya is multiple and layered, the result of a diverse linguistic precipitate created by centuries of colonial resistance.In Kâ€™icheeâ€™, dialect stereotypesâ€”accentsâ€”act as linguistic markers embodying particular ethnic registers. Kâ€™icheeâ€™ speakersÂ use and recombine their linguistic repertoireâ€”colloquial Kâ€™icheeâ€™, traditional Kâ€™icheeâ€™ discourse, colloquial Spanish, Standard Spanish, and language mixingâ€”in strategic ways to mark status and authority and to revitalize their traditional culture. The book surveys literary genres such as lyric poetry, political graffiti, and radio broadcasts, which express new experiences of Mayan-ness and anticolonial resistance. It also takes a historical perspective in examining oral and written Kâ€™icheeâ€™ discourses from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including the famous chronicle known as the Popol Vuh, and explores the unbreakable link between language, history, and culture in the Maya highlands.Â