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Author
Name Chinellato Díaz, Alessio
Research field Sociolinguistics
Career stage postdoc
Home university/institution Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB)
Department/Research unit at home university/institution Philology
Chair/Working group at home institution Ibero-Romance Linguistics - Prof. Laura Morgenthaler Garcia

International activity
Country Ecuador
Location Quito
University Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE)
Fund Research School Int.Mo.P
Type of activity conference visit
Period starts 12-09-2023
ends 15-09-2023
Keywords Language loss and revitalization, Pemón people, Venezuela-Brazil border.
Report Between loss and retrieval: challenges of the Pemón on the Venezuela-Brazil border

The sociocultural scenario of contact initiated at least a century ago between the indigenous Pemón (inhabitants of the Gran Sabana) and non-indigenous members of Venezuelan national society has been organized by a principle of difference and inequality that has also incorporated linguistic notions. The Taurepan, a regional subgroup that, together with the Arekuna and the Kamarakoto, make up the Pemón people (an ethnic group of the Cariban language family), live near the current border between Venezuela and Brazil, and have been the most affected by the processes of borderization and nationalization that worked in favor of transculturation and language shift. Based on ethnographic data collected in 2017 both in the Pemón community of Manak-Krü and in the neighboring border town of Santa Elena de Uairén, in this talk I discussed the value of Pemón (Taurepán) in this border area, approaching the ideological perspectives of indigenous and criollo (or non-indigenous) participants regarding the current situation of the native language in the area. In this sense, I highlighted the loss-retrieval dichotomy as an explanatory notion par excellence, as well as its different nuances and links with historical and contemporary processes that have affected the future of the Pemón language in the community and in the region, and from which a series of challenges arise in the defense of indigenous rights and the preservation of linguistic diversity in the area.
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