Spanish-Indigenous Bilingual Education in Chenalhó, Chiapas in Southeast Mexico

• Author / Creator

  Del Carpio Ovando, Karla Berenice

• Using a qualitative ethnographic approach, this research investigated the situation of the Tsotsil language spoken in Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico, by focusing on the implementation of a Spanish-Tsotsil bilingual elementary school. It was possible to discover that the Tsotsil language is still alive and that most parents who participated in this research transmit it to their children. However, there are students who prefer Spanish instead of their native language Tsotsil, due to the negative attitudes they have towards it such as “it is the language of old fashioned people while Spanish is the language of fashionable and modern people.” Nonetheless, most students portrayed positive attitudes towards both languages. The barriers that have affected the promotion of Tsotsil are: a monolingual approach and curriculum that favour Spanish, lack of resources in both languages, lack of training for instructors to teach with a bilingual approach and negative attitudes toward the native language.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Elementary bilingual education
  • Language
  • Spanish
  • Tsotsil
  • Barriers
  • Chenalhó
  • Indigenous

• Graduation date

  Fall 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3F722

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.