20 January 2025
MULTI-LING project at the annual meeting of Linguistic Society of America in Philadelphia
The results of our study of contemporary multilingualism in the Huasteca Potosina in Mexico were presented at the LSA (Linguistic Society of America) annual meeting in Philadelphia on the 11th of January by Elwira Dexter-Sobkowiak. In her conference presentation entitled “How endangered is Nahuatl: Assessing heritage language vitality among Nahua youth” Elwira assessed language vitality of Western Huasteca Nahuatl (WHN)and questioned its classification as ‘not endangered’ by the influential language endangerment AES scale. She argued that despite high number of speakers, WHN should be considered endangered due to significant problems with its transmission and dwindling domains of use. She developed this argument based on the analysis of language portraits elicited from primary and secondary school students who despite their Nahua heritage are mostly passive Nahuatl users and declare a strong preference for speaking Spanish. Elwira’s participation in the meeting was made possible thanks to funding received from the ERC MULTILING-HIST grant as well as from IDUB.
