Why should researchers contribute to the revitalization of languages? Revitalize linguistics to serve the resistance of the original and migrant peoples

Abstract

There is an increasingly broad consensus on the need to profoundly transform the academic research arena into the original languages, most of which are seriously threatened. Although universities in general have provided complex and detailed descriptions of subsistent lan-guages and their dialectal variants, however, they have hardly contributed to strengthening the capacities of the target populations to resist the globalizing tide and convert some of their instruments into opportunities, such as the media and social networks.

This article is based on the experience gained by the Ndatiaku Tu'un Savi project, whose purpose is to cooperate with the revitalization of Mixteco (Tu’un savi, ‘language of the rain’), making use of social networks to document live vernacular practices, as well as to give indig-enous speakers the intercultural recognition of their values.It is suggested that academic research should try to subvert the privileges granted by dominant cultures, and to assume the explicit objectives of social and political movements for the autonomy of native peoples: the normalization of their languages and the recovery of public spaces such as education or social media. In the American context, these objectives have been manifested and consolidated since 1992 to date.