Identity Recognition and Language Revitalization Trajectories in Intercultural Bilingual Education Teacher Education

Abstract

This article examines the language revitalization trajectories of two graduates from a teacher education program in intercultural bilingual education in Peru who were not socialized as speakers of the Aymara language in their childhood. Through the analysis of longitudinal narrative data using a critical sociolinguistic framework, it is shown that returning to their Indigenous language and culture has involved recognizing their speaker identity and an ethnic-linguistic identity that has been both enabled and hindered by the different identity models legitimized in the spaces navigated by the graduates. Findings reveal how these speakers view their teacher education program as both a catalyst and a hindrance to their identity as Aymara and their oral development of the Aymara language due to the weight of the prevailing monoglossic ethnic-linguistic ideologies and native-speaker ideologies in this arena. Also, findings show how they strive to identify themselves as legitimate Aymara people, active Aymara learners, and committed Aymara promoters in spaces outside the intercultural bilingual education system which are more open to heteroglossic identity models of ethnic-linguistic identity and bilingualism in Indigenous languages and Spanish. This article discusses the importance of examining identity and speakerhood models at play in language revitalization processes and highlights some implications for research and teacher education.