LINGUIST List 8.917

Sat Jun 21 1997

Books: Lang planning

Editor for this issue: Helen Dry <hdryemunix.emich.edu>

 Nancy Hornberger
 (Editor)

 INDIGENOUS LITERACIES IN THE AMERICAS
 Language Planning from the Bottom up

 1997. 23 x 15,5 cm. VI, 394 pages. 
 Cloth DM 198,-/approx. US$ 141.00
 ISBN 3-11-015217-7
 Contributions to the Sociology of Language 75

 Mouton de Gruyter * Berlin * New York


This volume documents goals, challenges, and prospects in contemporary
efforts to develop literacies in traditionally unwritten languages,
using experiences in indigenous language development in the Americas
as case studies. Written by scholars and practitioners who have in
many cases devoted their careers or lifetimes to developing indigenous
literacies from the bottom up, the volume gives testimony to the
vitality, versatility and stability of the languages and their
speakers, to the enormous confidence and energy invested in literacy
as a means of preserving and extending the languages, and to the role
of indigenous literacies as door of opportunity and medium of
expression for those who have long been marginalized in their
societies. The work collected here represents an unusual confluence of
research and scholarship in language planning and bilingual education,
the new literacy studies, and native and Latin American studies. The
contributors are well-qualified to write, whether as `insider' member
of the indigenous community or `outsider' scholar with substantial
experience in the community; inclusion of both kinds of expert voices
ensures a particularly reliable account. At a time when phrases like
`endangered languages' and `linguicism' are invoked to describe
the plight of the world's vanishing linguistic resources in their
encounter with the phenomenal growth of world languages such as
English, the cases included here offer stirring evidence that all is
not lost.

 Contents

Nancy H. Hornberger, Introduction * NORTH AMERICA * Nastasia Wahlberg,
Teaching and preserving Yup'ik traditional literacy * Jerry Lipka and
Esther Ilutsik, Ciulistet and the curriculum of the possible * Galena
Sells Dick and Teresa L. McCarty, Reclaiming Navajo: Language renewal
in an American Indian community school * Lucille J. Watahomigie and
Teresa L. MacCarty, Literacy for what? Hualapai literacy and language
maintenance * Rebecca Benjamin, Regis Pecos and Mary Eunice Romero,
Language revitalization efforts in the Pueblo de Cochiti: Becoming
`literate' in an oral society * MESOAMERICA * H. Russel Bernard,
Language preservation and publishing * Josefa Leonarda Gonzales
Ventura, Experiences in the development of a writing system for Nuu
Savi * Jesus Salinas Pedraza, Saving and strengthening indigenous
Mexican languages: The CELIAC experience * Julia Becker Richards and
Michael Richards, Mayan language literacy in Guatemala: A
socio-historical overview * SOUTH AMERICA * Nancy H. Hornberger,
Quechua literacy and empowerment in Peru * Juan Carlos Godenzzi,
Literacy and modernization among the Quechua speaking population of
Peru * Andres Chirinos, An experience of indigenous literacy in Peru *
Kendall A. King, Indigenous politics and native language literacies:
Recent shifts in bilingual education policy and practice in Ecuador *
Mercedes Cotacachi, Attitudes of teachers, children and parents
towards bilingual intercultural education * Nancy H. Hornberger and
Kendall A. King, Bringing the language forward: School-based
initiatives for Quechua language revitalization in Ecuador and Bolivia
* Luis Enrique Lopez, To Guaranize: A verb actively conjugated by the
Bolivian Guaranis * CONCLUSION * Nany H. Hornberger, Language
planning from the bottom up * Afterword * Brian V. Street, Local
literacies and vernacular literacies: Implications for national
literacy politics * Index


_______________________________________________________________________

Mouton de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter, Inc. 
Postfach 30 34 21 200 Saw Mill River Road 
D-10728 Berlin Hawthorne, NY 10532 
Germany USA 
Fax: +49 (0)30 26005-351 Fax: +1 914 747-1326 
email: 100064.2307compuserve.com


This and further publications can also be ordered via World Wide Web: 

 http://www.deGruyter.de

• Blackwells
• Cascadilla Press
• Cornell University Linguistics Dept.
• CSLI Publications
• John Benjamins
• Kluwer Academic Publishers
• Lawrence Erlbaum
• MIT Working papers in Linguistics
• Mouton de Gruyter
• U. of Massachusetts Graduate Linguistics Association
• Pacific Linguistics Publications
• Summer Institute of Linguistics