Luisa Hurtado Iglesias
Master's
Spanish and Portuguese
Research Title : Sociolinguistic Attitudes in Silvia and Popayan, Cauca, Colombia
The Colombian Census reports that 41.6% of the total indigenous population does not understand or speak their community’s indigenous language, and about 6.8% do not speak the language but can understand it. Although it is evident that one of the reasons behind these percentages of people that do not speak their indigenous language is the dominance of Spanish within the same linguistic spaces, the social perception of indigenous languages plays a key role on their preservation. Luisa’s research focuses on identifying how the current perception of minority languages in Colombia can affect language polices, educational models, and individual identities within indigenous communities.
