Drawing on an ethnographic study of Indigenous education initiatives in Mexico, this paper focuses on the roles of local activists in language policy. I examine different strategies and stances of language activism, examining popular culture activists who do not focus on 'language' in a traditional way. I argue that strategies and stances that approach language as object, communication practice, identity, social relation, and more, are all meaningful elements in language politics.
In recent decades language policy research has given greater focus to the role of social actors who influence language politics in practice (e.g. Johnson & Johnson 2015; Hornberger et al. 2018). At the same time, critiques about the impotence of top-down policies have increased, in particular in relation to linguistic rights policies (e.g. Stroud & Heugh 2004; Lim, Stroud & Wee 2018). This paper contributes to scholarship on the crucial roles that local activists and advocates play in appropriating recognition policies and discourses in order to change ideological and institutional spaces at micro and meso levels. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Indigenous (Isthmus Zapotec) education initiatives in Oaxaca, Mexico, I analyze the repertoires of language activism that are present in this context. There are a range of social actors who are engaged in intentional strategies to counter the exclusion of Indigenous speakers and languages at the local or regional level. These activists are in the minority however; a majority of the social actors in this speech community do not identify as language activists. Examining the role of popular culture activists who do not focus on 'language' in a traditional way, I analyze both their strategies and stances as meaningful elements in local language politics. Additionally, I consider the imaginaries underlying different strategies and stances. While some strategies emphasize language as object or communication, many popular culture activists emphasize identity and social relations, with language playing a key role in establishing contemporary hybrid, multilingual and multicultural identities. I argue that these creative local strategies and stances are crucial elements of Indigenous language advocacy politics.
