@article{Ethnolinguistic:7572,
      recid = {7572},
      author = {Bloechl, Christopher Paul},
      title = {Voicing the Maya: Media Technologies and Politics of  Ethnolinguistic Identity in Yucatán},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2023-08},
      pages = {227},
      abstract = {This dissertation examines a tension underlying Maya  advocacy in the Mexican Yucatán: Though advocates strive to  preserve (Yucatec) Maya language and culture, they also  pursue transformative improvements in both domains. Ongoing  programs of language standardization and ‘indigenous  development’ managed by governmental institutions exemplify  the tension. Language standardizers craft and prescribe a  purified register of Maya, punctuated with archaic lexemes,  in order to counteract language shift and bring the  language into new fields of usage. And for agents and  advocates of ‘indigenous development,’ who concurrently  pursue socioeconomic advancement and cultural  fortification, the customary roles and practices of Maya  people sometimes interfere with developmental objectives.  These issues are complicated by the fact that many of the  Maya advocates employed by governmental institutions are  themselves Maya. My dissertation investigates this advocacy  ethnographically by way of Maya speakers’ media practices  and engagements. I focus on a popular state-run radio  station in southern Yucatán that broadcasts daily in Maya  language to a wide listening public. I show that the  station’s announcers are caught between rival norms of  language and conflicting notions of Maya identity. In  broadcasts, the radio announcers must negotiate their  competing commitments to a purified Maya standard and the  so-called xa’ak’a’an ‘mixed’ Maya that is spoken by their  listeners. And relatedly, they must resolve or manage  incongruities between official ethnolinguistic designations  and enduring local conceptions of Maya and ‘Indian’  personhood. Such negotiations of these linked relations in  popular mediatized discourse, I argue, consequentially  affect the enregisterment of a Maya standard. Based on my  field research among radio announcers and listeners, I show  that the ongoing standardization of Maya language pursues a  structural-semiotic transformation of the customary model  of Maya language and personhood, which locates ‘pure’  language in the ancient past. Maya radio announcers are  agents of the transformation, but their alignments with  purist standardization are moderated by reason of their  roles as public communicators and their habituation to  local speech norms. I show that while the announcers  broadcast in standardized Maya and advance its attendant  ideologies, they also circulate countervailing local  values.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/7572},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.7572},
}