Indigeneity and linguistic heritage practices in evangelical Quechua

Abstract

Heritage language studies point out that a sense of value and fragility can spur investments in linguistic practices; that heritage language practices can provide ways to valorize difference and organizing belonging among minority or colonized populations (

); and that taking language as “heritage” can promote ideas of social and linguistic disjuncture ( ; ). In a community shifting from Quechua to Spanish, can evangelical services in Quechua be analyzed as a linguistic heritage practice? Building on studies of heritage language focusing on language education ( ), this article explores the autonomously organized Quechua language practices in several evangelical Indigenous churches in Caylloma, Peru, as a form of linguistic heritage. Using language ideological analysis of interviews and metapragmatic analysis of a recorded church service, this article finds that Quechua language heritage practice scale the congregation as Indigenous at the overlapping scales ( ) of national racialization and as residents of specific towns in Caylloma. These practices both reify Indigenous belonging for members of the congregation and advance ideas of generational racial and linguistic disjuncture. Analyzing these practices as “heritage language” reveals that they resist an ongoing language shift from Quechua to Spanish in ways that are both limited and contain potential for future decolonization.