Authenticity in language ideology


Like many marginalized languages, Chanka Quechua (Peru) lacks community-wide prestige norms associated with standard-language ideology. Formal situations require Spanish, and few speakers are literate in Quechua, so normative speech styles are absent. Speakers’ evaluative judgments do not reference notions of correctness; rather, they value puro ‘pure’ speech and authenticity.
This paper explores alternative approaches to accessing sociolinguistic judgments with a study of the variably present uvular phoneme in the past tense /–rqa/ morpheme, as exemplified in the following alternation:

 

(1)

 



 ri-r
 q
 a-ni
 
~

 ri-ra-ni
 


go-pst-1sg
 
 
go-pst-1sg
 


‘I went’
 
‘I went’



 

 
 
To contrast speech from sociolinguistic interviews, careful, self-monitored speech is elicited through oral retelling of material presented aurally, rather than in writing. Of 38 participants, rural speakers tend to have higher rates of /q/ than urbanites and reflect idealized puro Quechua. We argue that authenticity guides variation, in place of standard language ideology.