Description:

A Difficult Language: Aymara Media, Linguistic Labor, and Urban Indigeneity in Bolivia

The cultivation of the Aymara language affords forms of expertise and authority for language professionals, who often foreground its complexity and emphasize its difference from Spanish. Bolivian Aymaras’ insistence on keeping the language in the public sphere poses difficulties to a colonial status-quo and to those who would rather not accommodate, much less learn, this or any other Indigenous language. Drawing on analyses of Bolivian media and research among Bolivian Aymara language educators and media professionals, this talk examines these dynamics and their impact, both on the Aymara language itself and on the unequal terrain of Bolivia’s plurinational, multilingual society.