Enseñar a descubrir las lenguas indígenas nacionales a partir de Smith-Stark (1989): hacia una aplicación de la lingüística en educación superior

Abstract

In this paper we invite our fellow linguists to bring their language sciences undergraduate students to Mexican indigenous languages through a didactic application of the text “Las lenguas indomexicanas: el arte colectivo del pensamiento”; written in 1989 by the American linguist Thomas Cedric Smith-Stark (1948-2009). The didactic instrumentation is based on the pair of strategies that we have called <i>Pochtecatl</i>: the first one; a contrastive set of examples of Spanish and Mexican indigenous languages; aims to make them aware of their structural variation. The second one; a reading guide for locating information; seeks to familiarize them with their genetic; dialectological and sociolinguistic classification. We detail the steps to develop it and raise some methodological concerns about its systematization with other undergraduate students. In this way we contribute via applied linguistics to enforce the General Law on Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples; Chapter ii; Article 11 (2003).