(Re)structuring structures, speech and selves: Yoruba language learning and redevelopment in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the redevelopment of Yoruba as a curricular language in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and the sociohistorical and cultural dimensions of its changing form and function by drawing from the literatures on language contact and the sociosemiotics of language. Centrally, this dissertation clarifies that what drives the local study and sociolinguistic status of these linguistic practices are the social values that Yoruba carries in Salvador according to local cultural schemas. In four studies, I explore the social and historical significances attached to Yoruba linguistic forms (within local cultural schemas) in northeastern Brazil and how these socially significant language practices often serve as sites for the materialization and negotiation of cultural ideas, particularly notions about personhood (race, heritage, nation). As part of my exploration of the cultural schemas (or Yoruba language ideologies) that shape and are shaped by the local patterns and practice of Yoruba language in Salvador, I examine how these language ideologies manifest or materialize through discursive practices at different levels of the local Yoruba language learning enterprise. That is, through the distribution of Yoruba learning and the types of students (academic, career, heritage, and religious learners), the language-learning motivational orientations and perceived values attached to Yoruba learning, the evaluations of teaching and the notions of expertise or teaching qualification, and the institutions and linguistic forms or skill sets involved in teaching Yoruba. This dissertation highlights the impact of language ideologies and social context on language learning and teaching as well as language use overall, with theoretical implications for language learning and pedagogy research and language studies more generally. It contributes new scientific data on the sociolinguistic situation of Yoruba linguistic practices in Brazil, highlighting Yoruba’s functional expansion from a liturgical to a curricular language. The dissertation also demonstrates an alternate language contact trajectory and unconventional language practices overlooked by extant scholarship. It invites linguists to reframe discussions of the sociolinguistic situation of post-plantation, post-colonial societies, moving beyond a notion of “outcomes” as the endpoint and to instead embrace ever-evolving language contact situations shaped by ever-changing cultural assumptions about language in relation to society.

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