Chapter 12
Linguistic Landscape in Otavalo
Kichwa, Spanish or English?
This article examines the Linguistic Landscape
of Otavalo (Ecuador) where besides Spanish, Kichwa and English are
present. This city is known for its cultural diversity and its
handmade crafts market which offers a setting for the investigation
of issues related with the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010; Coupland & Coupland,
2014) and processes of language commodification (Heller, Jaworski, & Thurlow,
2014). Through quantitative and qualitative data our
results show that Kichwa is seen as an identity and cultural marker
as well as a commodity, while English is indexed to modernity and
international orientation. Therefore, it is shown that social
meanings attributed to languages are dynamic indexes which can be
mobilized according to the social actors.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Sociolinguistic contextualization of languages in Ecuador
- Otavalo
- Theoretical background
- Languages in the linguistic landscape
- Linguistic landscape in Ecuador
- Methodology
- Analysis and discussion
- An overview of Otavalo’s LL
- Kichwa language in Otavalo LL
- English as an index of prestige and modernity
- Conclusions
-
Notes
-
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