Linguistic Perspectives in Ecuadorian Amazonian Kichwa

Despite the fact that Amazonian Kichwa speakers consider themselves to be both linguistically and culturally distinct from their highland counterparts (Ennis 2020; Wroblewski 2012), relatively little has been done to document their language attitudes and how these attitudes are reflected in their speech. This study shows this to be a valid line of questioning. Using commentary from interviews with Amazonian Kichwa people, I show that views on the status and future of the language are divided, as well as perspectives on the role of non-Kichwa sources like schools and governments in language maintenance. Older and native speakers of Kichwa are shown to hold more pessimistic viewpoints about the status and future of the language and to not consider the option of outside sources of Kichwa education. Participants' viewpoints of the family as the principal source of language instruction were consistent. Possible correlation was found between these language attitudes and speakers' pronunciation of Spanish /r/. The findings of this study have implications for the role of social factors like language attitudes in language variation.