ANR Langas

GENERAL LANGUAGES FROM SOUTH AMERICA : Quechua, Guarani, Tupi

In south America, some amerindian languages widely spread before colonial times turned into vehicular languages in spanish and portuguese territories since the XVIth century. They have been written and called “general languages” for religious purposes. Based on the comparative analysis of those text, LANGAS do research on internal (semantic) and external (social) history in order to renew historical anthropology of the region.

Towards a new philology of Amerindian languages to renew historic anthropology of South America

Usually historians are not equipped to read Amerindian languages and Anthropologist, who are expected to acquire this skill, are also more likely to study present social configurations. But when in meso-america a new philology based on maya and nahuatl documents has been fostered, contributing to a new and historical anthropology of those regions, there is little systematic studies of quechua, guarani and tupi. Far from essentialist approach, which tends to see those documents as a proof of indian thought’s resistance, and far from constructivist analysis of the same which only want to see them as a profound occidentalisation, we would like to escape from this debate resistance/occidentalisation and try to look at those documents with new eyes.  Our working hypothesis is: Aren’t they an index of the elaboration of a common vocabulary between indigenous and colonial authorities, who both spoke general languages? a kind of linguistic middle ground or contact zone as the result of mutual accommodation, strategies, tactics, mestizajes and creative misunderstandings ?  The project LANGAS will turn those corpus visibles, compare them and analyse their contents. We’ll contribute to the social history of languages, to the historical anthropology of the region, and to the semantic history of their political vocabulary. We have selected two distinct corpus related to different periods : the first one when political concepts are being standardized when colonization is affirmed and when amerindian general languages are expanded (mid XVI to mid XVII) and on the contrary when traditional colonial power is being challenged by national independences and by political and economical modernities, in the very moment when those general language are also being fragmented, regionalised and ethnicised (from mid XVIII to mid XIX).

Philology, semantic history and historical anthropology

Three steps: philology, semantic history and historical anthropology. A first step is primary philology: palaeography, attribution of the text, historical and dialectical identification, comparison with the rest of the corpus, transliteration in modern graphics, analysis of the conditions of production and diffusion. The secondary philology interprets those documents as testimonies of cultural periods. In the perspective of Semantic history applied to political vocabulary in Quechua, Guarani and Tupi, we’ll identify key words and its uses in a vast corpus, with specific computer’s tools: the website and a browser able to do research in different graphics have already been built. We expect entirely new results about the indigenous colonial experiences. Therefore our research participates to historical anthropology interested in indigenous social, political and religious organisations. We’ll lay out our result in semantic maps, dictionaries and specific text analysis.

Results

The creation of the Langa’s website, incorporating corpus in Quechua, Guarani and Tupi (in Amerindian and Spanish palaeographic and modern versions. An international symposium in Paris (22 and 23 of October 2012) in order to study the origin and history of the colonial notion “lenguas generales” and other linked notions; the political vocabulary of manifests, decrees and proclamations written in those languages during the independence period. A collective paper in English is on preparation, and a collective publication in a Spanish review is programed. An international symposium in Lima in 2014 will contribute to the social history of “lenguas generales” and will promote a new South American philology. A collective book will be elaborated.
 

Research team