Acquiring Cuzco: Marginalized Language, Ideology, and Study
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ACQUIRING CUZCO: MARGINALIZED LANGUAGE, IDEOLOGY, AND STUDY ABROAD IN PERU DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Devin Keith Grammon, M.A. Graduate Program in Spanish & Portuguese The Ohio State University 2018 Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Anna M. Babel, Advisor Associate Professor Leslie C. Moore Associate Professor Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza Professor Glenn A. Martínez Copyrighted by Devin Keith Grammon 2018 2 Abstract The value of study abroad (SA) for foreign language learning is connected to the idea that immersion in a host community provides students with access to expert speakers and authentic target language input. In this dissertation, I investigate the nature of this access through an analysis of the social and cultural politics of language use and communicative participation in SA settings in Cuzco, Peru. The question of how a host context affords language learning remains under-examined within scholarship on SA, where researchers have prioritized the investigation of students’ linguistic gains, perspectives, and experiences in privileged, monolingual societies. Although researchers have struggled to provide generalizations about the outcomes of language learning abroad, a growing number of studies suggest that a SA experience is particularly important for students’ development of sociolinguistic competence vis-à-vis the appropriate use of socially-meaningful linguistic variation from the host community. This dissertation advances this research by investigating how local stakeholders and linguistic features tied to the host community participate in communicative settings for language learning abroad in Cuzco. Through four ethnographic case studies, I provide qualitative analyses of data collected over 16 months of research in Southern Peru focused on immersion SA programs that provide language classes in Quechua and Spanish for U.S. college ii students. Key investigative foci are language ideologies, systems of ideas and beliefs that mediate people’s contextual understanding and use of language. The perspectives and practices of local SA stakeholders (school administrators, host families, language teachers) and students are presented and analyzed in relation to patterns of language use in Cuzco’s city center, a SA school, language classrooms, and homestays. Overall, findings illustrate the ways in which language learning during SA in Cuzco was imbued with social and political interests that marginalized the practice of local language forms by local actors and students. First, I link language learning in SA to Cuzco’s heritage tourism industry and show how both are tied to the marketing of indigenous authenticity through the use of Quechua. Turning to the management of SA programs and homestays at a SA school, I then illustrate how administrators’ preoccupation with student satisfaction served to circumscribe students’ access to local speakers and cultural context of language immersion. Next, I focus on SA language teachers and show how classroom instruction at the school rested on ideas and beliefs that devalued the local variety of Spanish and linked its features to a rural, Quechua speaking subject. Though students largely eschewed the use of local linguistic variants in SA settings, I suggest that they performed sociolinguistic competence ultimately through their evaluations of language varieties and features in relation to a local, racialized notion of language proficiency. In order to understand how a host context affords language learning, I argue that we must look to the communities, institutions, and ideological structures that shape students’ relationship with the local speakers and language varieties during SA. The iii findings presented in this dissertation underline the pivotal role played by local stakeholders and cultural systems of ideas and beliefs in mediating students’ sociolinguistic participation in a host community. Understanding these dynamics is particularly important at a time when globalization has transformed both how and why we acquire a second language, encouraging us to reevaluate long held assumptions about SA as a vehicle of foreign language learning. iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the memories of my grandparents, whom I have missed especially during the completion of this project: Keith and Velda Grammon Darrell and Barbara Vahle v Acknowledgments I am extremely fortunate to have been able to count on so many people over these past few years to help see me through the completion of my graduate studies and this dissertation. I sincerely thank you all from the bottom of my heart. First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to my family for all of their love, support, and encouragement. Were it not for my parents, Larry and Rose Grammon, completing this Ph.D. never would have been possible. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you made for my education and for the many ways that you have contributed to my well- being over the past 31 years. I also express my sincerest gratitude to my sister, Heather Lewis, who has been such an inspiration to me in all aspects of life. Thank you for putting up with me and for putting me up when I needed it most. I am truly appreciative of all the support provided by my advisor and members of my dissertation committee. Without you all, I would have been utterly lost these past years. I absolutely could not have asked for a better advisor and mentor than Anna Babel. Thank you, Anna, for everything that you have done for me, and for being such an incredible role model. I owe a special thanks to Leslie Moore for her encouragement and mentorship and to Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza for all of her generosity and tough questions about my research. Thanks also to Glenn Martínez for his kind interest in my vi research and many incisive comments. I admire you all and the examples you have set for me. I am especially indebted to all of my research participants and those who supported me during fieldwork in Southern Peru. First and foremost, I thank Regina Tupacyupanqui Arredondo for everything that she has done to support me and my research during my many months in Cuzco. Likewise, I would like to express my gratitude to Jean-Jacques Decoster for all of his support, and say thanks to the administrators, teachers, and staff at Centro Tinku who helped me with the completion of this project. Thanks also to those at the School for International Training, the Quechua Language Academy, and the Ministries of Education and Culture for helping to make parts of this research possible. I am grateful to Healing House Cusco for providing me with a much-needed community during fieldwork, and to Kerri Blumenthal for her companionship and encouragement. Thanks also to those friends whose paths crossed with my own while I was in Southern Peru: Sarah, Cecilio, Allison, Yves, Sayda, Lisa, Emma, Marco, Anne Marie, Jorge, Alex, Kelly, David, Jake, Kyla, Erin, Kasey, Zoe, and Lily among many others. You shared so much with me and contributed more to my well- being than you will ever know. Additionally, I am extremely appreciative of my fellow academic siblings for their companionship and for being there for me during various low points over the past few years. I admire Ashlee Dauphinais and Carrie Ann Morgan and thank them for their patience, insights, and inspiration. I cannot imagine having gone through this journey without the two of you. Justin Bland and Justin Pinta provided much needed insight, vii company, and the right amount of distraction during the writing process, as did Chelsea Pflum, Hugo Salgado, Stacey Alex, and Christian Supiot. I also am grateful to José Miguel Herbozo and Miluska Benavides for their friendship and interest in my research. Thanks to Jessica Holman for helping to remind me where I’m from and what’s at stake in all of this. There are many others that I must thank as well. Barbara Smith and Jim Maxon have done so much to support my education over the past 14 years and to remind me to use my gifts and privileges in the service of others; I salute them with upmost respect and appreciation. I am grateful to Brooke Caton, Tamarri Wieder, and Jon Hedrick for their friendship, patience with me, and for contributing so much to my welfare including visits during fieldwork. Thank you to my high school Spanish teachers, Sudzy Benesch and Emily Eggleston, for helping to foster my love for Spanish and Latin America all those years ago in their classrooms. I am extremely grateful for my undergraduate advisor, Joy Landeira, who saw my potential and helped to make graduate school and my academic career possible. Thanks to Kira Hall for introducing me to sociocultural linguistics as a M.A. student and challenging me intellectually as no one had done before. Cheers to Sandra Facemire for all of her help and support over the last year. This research was supported by a Fulbright Hays DDRA fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education and grants by the Tinker Foundation and Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University. Additional thanks go to The Ohio State University Libraries and Center for Latin American Studies, the taxpayers of Ohio and Colorado, and the voters of Colorado for their support and assistance in the viii completion of this dissertation and my graduate studies. I am also very grateful to the faculty in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon for giving me the extra motivation to finish it all. To those who helped me along the way but whose names do not appear here for a variety of reasons, thank you. ix Vita 2012…………………….…M.A. Hispanic Linguistics (Spanish), University of Colorado 2010 ………………………...B.A. Spanish and History, University of Northern Colorado Publications Grammon, Devin. 2017. Variación con haber en Aló Presidente.