Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T06:17:05.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Nancy H. Hornberger (ed.), Indigenous literacies in the Americas: Language planning from the bottom up. (Contributions to the sociology of language, 75.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997. Pp. 394.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1999

Andrée Tabouret-Keller
Affiliation:
Faculté de Psychologie et de Sciences de l'Education, Université Louis Pasteur, 67000 Strasbourg, France, [email protected]

Abstract

This book is an important step in the literature of literacy – both for its rich and multi-faceted information and analyses, and for its approach. It deals with efforts to develop alphabetic literacies in traditionally unwritten languages that were already present in the Americas at the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th century. Three complementary areas of scholarship are concerned: language planning and bilingual education; literacy studies, especially “new literacy” studies, with their emphasis on multiple literacies and their local meaning; and Native American studies, in particular the exploration of Native American ways of knowing. A broad array of case studies is offered in a three-part arrangement: North America (5 papers: Yup'ik [2], Navajo, Hualapai, Cochití); Meso-America (four papers: the CELIAC project in Mexico [2], Nuu Savi, a Mixtec language in Mexico, Mayan in Guatemala); and South America (7 papers: Quechua in Peru [3], bilingual education in Ecuador [2], Quechua in Ecuador and Bolivia, Guaraní in Bolivia). The book has an introduction and conclusion by Hornberger, and an afterword by Brian V. Street.

Type
REVIEWS
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)