Lengua e identidad: ideologías lingüísticas, pérdida y revitalización de la lengua entre los tapietes

Abstract

The Tapiete Indians from the Province of Salta, were till five decades ago hunters-gatherers and fishermen. This group’s originary habitat was southern Bolivia, and they have been characterized for maintaining interethnic relations with other groups of the Chaco region, which influenced them both culturally and linguistically. Since the 1910s they began migrating temporarily to northern Argentina in search of work at the sugar-cane plantations and timber-mills. These migrations became permanent during the 1940s and 1950s when a group of Tapiete settled permanently in the outskirts of the town of Tartagal. The history of this small settlement has been marked by geographic displacement and marginality. Since then the Tapiete have undergone a process of culture change and complex interethnic relations with other indigenous groups and white settlers. Their language belongs to the Tupi-Guarani linguistic family and currently shows a situation of language loss and interruption of intergenerational transmission. The purpose of this article is to analyze the following: on the one hand, the tension between the process of language loss and the recent positive attitudes towards the language, and on the other, the cultural representations and linguistic ideologies embedded in the link between language and identity. We frame this study within the diverse historical and political processes that influenced Tapiete society.