ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a broad introduction to the volume. It first comments on the historical context of linguistic colonisation by Spanish of the Andean region. It thus anticipates the effects of Spanish language hegemony over the Indigenous languages and their speakers, to be discussed in the body of the book. It also describes the geographical context of the research. The author positions herself in relation to this subject matter, from the disciplinary perspectives of critical sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. The convergence between the rise of Latin American Indigenous social movements in the 1990s and the growth of scholarly concern with endangered Indigenous language research in the region at that time, is pointed out. The chapter reflects on approaches to critical language policy research and flags up the importance, in that context, of analysing the relationship between language and power. It also draws attention to the importance of a semiotic and multimodal view, when considering the place of language in Andean social life. The chapter then lays out the structure of the book.
