Search

Linguistic purist ideologies circulate widely on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Yucatec Maya speakers differentiate a 'pure," "authentic" Maya located in the past from a "mixed," "corrupted" Maya located in the present. Today, the ideologically "pure," "authentic" Maya of the past, jach maaya, is gaining a new center of authenticity in the present through its increasing institutionalization. This project is doubly modern in its temporal rupture, which engages the past as authentic and enduring, and rupture with society, which rejects vernacular Maya for institutionally authoritative language practices, produced largely through the science of linguistics. Authenticating jach maaya today through increased institutionalization holds implications for Maya speakers' livelihoods, vernacular language practices, and understandings of Maya‐ness, as well as for the future of these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how ideologies of language purism are reformatted by creating interdiscursive links across spatial and temporal scales. I trace convergences and divergences between South Asian and Québécois sociohistorical regimes of language purism as they pertain to the contemporary experiences of Montreal's Tamil diasporas. Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils in Montreal emphasize their status differences by claiming that the former speak a modern “vernacular” Tamil and the latter speak an ancient “literary” Tamil. The segregation and purification of these social groups and languages depend upon the intergenerational reproduction of scalar boundaries between linguistic forms, interlocutors, and decentered contexts. [Tamils, Quebec, diaspora, linguistic purism, spatiotemporal scales] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]