ABSTRACT

Dialogues on decolonizing linguistic studies and other scholarship have been ongoing for several decades, most recently within the contexts of the Global South and Global North, with the recognition that multilingualism, rather than monolingualism, is the sociolinguistic modal norm in the world. Chicana and Chicano Studies and Chican@ Sociolinguistics are discussed as emergent Alter-Native epistemologies developed for the purposes of self-knowledge, self-definition, and self-determination of the Chican@ Mexican peoples. This chapter explores the question, What can Chican@ Sociolinguistics and southern dialogues on multilingualisms learn from each other?

After reviewing the development of la perspectiva chicana/the chican@ perspective in the field of Chican@ Studies and of Chican@ Sociolinguistics (distinguished from Chicanology and Chicana/o Identity Studies), six issues of dialogic engagement with southern multilingualism are discussed from the standpoint of epistemology: (1) the metaphorical binary of the Global North and Global South; (2) political units, regions, or populations; (3) units of analyses; (4) decolonizing; (5) linguistic diversity; and (6) democratic multilingualisms.