ABSTRACT
My chapter examines how mobile technologies—specifically cellphilms (short videos shot entirely on a cellphone, smart device, or tablet)—enabled intergenerational knowledge transfer and learning between youth and elders around our endangered ancestral language and cultural practices. As English and Spanish cultural productions become more dominant in the global mediasphere, a more multifaceted approach that combines culture and technological elements offers productive possibilities for overcoming this increasing crisis of language loss. Moreover, this chapter will also be framed by a multiliteracies approach (New London Group, 2000), because like Zapotec pedagogy, multiliteracies also understands that language learning and knowledge acquisition is multimodal, engaging with multiple literacy methods—linguistic, visual, auditory, gestural, and spatial—all key elements to learning and communication. Through this participatory visual approach grounded in Zapotec ancestral traditions, youth reawaken their relationship with their Elders, and more importantly their relationship with their ancestral language of diidxaza’. This chapter will explore the role that cellphilms, made by youth in our community, can play in both the reawakening and securing our Zapotec language and cultural practices for future generations.
