Emiliana Cruz facts for kids

Emiliana Cruz (born June 30, 1971) is a modern-day expert in linguistic anthropology. This field studies how language and culture are connected. She was born in Cieneguilla, a small community in Oaxaca, Mexico. She earned her highest degree in linguistic anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. Today, she teaches at CIESAS-CDMX, a research center in Mexico City. She also helped start the Chatino Language Documentation Project, which works to record and preserve the Chatino languages.

Emiliana Cruz's Journey

Emiliana Cruz grew up in Cieneguilla, San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca, Mexico. This is an indigenous community, meaning it's home to people who are the original inhabitants of the land. She is a native speaker of Eastern Chatino, one of the three main Chatino languages. Her father, Tomas Cruz Lorenzo, was a respected indigenous leader.

Emiliana's research mainly focuses on Oaxaca and the Chatino language. Even though she first studied the grammar, sounds, and word structures of languages, especially those with "tones" (where the pitch of your voice changes the meaning of a word), her work now covers many different areas. She connects ideas from linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, indigenous studies, linguistics, education, and geography.

A very important part of her research is working closely with the communities she studies. Her goal is to bring together academic research and community efforts to document and protect indigenous languages and their ways of speaking. She believes it's important for indigenous communities to be involved in her research. This means she trains native speakers to read, write, and teach their own languages.

Workshops on Language Tones

Emiliana Cruz has organized several workshops to help people understand language tones. In 2012, the first of three summer workshops took place. Each workshop lasted ten days. Nine language experts from Mexico and the US taught these workshops. They included Emiliana Cruz herself, along with Anthony C. Woodbury, Francisco Arellanes, Eric Campbell, Christian DiCanio, Mario Chávez Peón, Alice C. Harris, John Kingston, and Justin D. McIntosh.

These workshops taught speakers of Oto-Manguean languages how to analyze the tone systems of their own languages. About fifty students attended each workshop. They came from major Otomanguean groups like the Zapotecs, Mazatecs, Mixtecs, Triquis, Chinantecs, Me’phaas, Matlatzincas, and Chatinos.

In the mornings, students learned about how tones are made and how to discover and analyze them. They also looked at examples of Otomanguean tone systems. In the afternoons, students received special help based on their skill level. Then, they met in smaller groups with other speakers of their own language. The Chatino student group included speakers from seven different Eastern Chatino language varieties. Most of the students were young people who worked as literacy trainers in a federal education program.

These workshops were the first of their kind for speakers of Otomanguean languages. Many students have continued to study the tone systems of their native languages. Some are even creating teaching materials to use in local schools.

Creating Teaching Materials

Emiliana Cruz also organized a three-year series of workshops for native speakers of indigenous languages in Mexico. This series started in the summer of 2015 in Oaxaca City. The topic was how to write "pedagogical grammars." These are special grammar books designed to help people learn and teach a language.

Professor Luiz Amaral, an expert in applied linguistics and language teaching from the University of Massachusetts, taught this workshop. Creating pedagogical grammars is a key step for serious research on any language. This workshop series aimed to encourage discussion between language experts, indigenous studies scholars, and anthropologists. The goal was to create useful grammar and cultural information for speaker communities. It also supported the right of every speaker to understand how their own language is built.

Languages, Land, and Culture

By studying the Chatino language, Emiliana Cruz has also learned a lot about the cultural aspects of Chatino-speaking communities. Her current research focuses on the land rights of indigenous peoples. She also explores the connection between language and the land, and how this relates to documenting and bringing back endangered languages.

Her project looks at how the language and the physical landscape of San Juan Quiahije are connected. This project also explores how indigenous people talk about the land. It tells the story of why and how older Eastern Chatino speakers pass on special words and related vocabulary to their communities. These communities are facing "homogenizing influences," which means outside ideas and ways of life are making things more uniform.

Her work also investigates "language ideologies" (ideas about language) and practices. This helps her understand bigger topics like the effects of Mexican government policies, local development projects, democracy, migration, and globalization on how Chatinos describe their land.

See also

In Spanish: Emiliana Cruz para niños