CIESAS / Linguapax, México
He has worked with languages at risk, generating multimodal materials that allow the reinforcement, empowerment, and linguistic and cultural revitalization of threatened languages and cultures. He is a PhD of Arts and Letters from the University of Amsterdam, Research Professor at CIESAS since 1984, Coordinator of the Digital Collection of Indigenous Languages at CIESAS and National Emeritus Researcher of the National System of Researchers in Mexico, as well as representative of Linguapax for Latin America. He has extensively published articles and books on native languages, especially Nahuatl, language contact, pragmatics, language revitalization, critical linguistics, among others.
Creating social justice through culturally appropriate and sustainable revitalization methods
One of the proposed strategies for linguistic revitalization involves an indirect approach, where active participation of the speakers themselves is crucial. Co-authorship and playful interactions with children are encouraged, fostering the recovery of verbal art genres from the community, such as poems, stories, tongue twisters, and riddles. Multimodal educational materials are also created to reflect the verbal and sociocultural epistemologies specific to the communities. These materials are disseminated through workshops that promote joyful and didactic language use, especially among children and young people, who play a vital role in the sustainability of languages and cultures.
Active documentation and recreation of endangered verbal repertoires enable the production of culturally sensitive tangible products, using contemporary technologies like augmented reality and animation, which enhances their prestige and social justice appeal among younger generations. The presentation will showcase the results of a pilot project on the production of revitalizing materials, with the hope of inspiring future collaborations and the development of multimodal products in various languages that encourage their use and indirectly contribute to the revitalization of indigenous languages as part of the process of building a distinct cultural industry.