The politics of language acquisition: Language learning as social modeling in the northwest Amazon

Abstract

This paper considers language acquisition within the greater context of gender-associated norms and practices among the Amerindian speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages in the northwest Amazon, where descent and language are viewed as manifestations of one another. There, an ideology links linguistic performance to patrilineal descent and prohibits marriage between speakers of the same language. This paper argues that, through linguistic modeling in the northwest Amazon, one language, father's, becomes standard and public; while another language, mother's, non-standard and private.