Micro-level language planning and YouTube comments: destigmatising indigenous languages through rap music

This article looks at the web comments to two video dips posted on YouTube in 2014. One video features the song 'Sangre Maya', by Pat Boy and El Cima, two Maya rappers from the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. The other song is called 'Rap de la Tierra' and is performed by Luanko, a Mapuche rapper from Santiago in Chile. First, I discuss significant developments of institutional language policy and planning aiming at the recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity in Mexico and Chile as well as micro-level grassroots initiatives that exploit new technologies and rap for language revitalisation purposes. Drawing from the field of language ideologies, I then look at a selection of YouTube comments generated by these two relatively successful songs and discuss the prevailing discourses triggered by these video clips. I argue that the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the songs, strengthens the ongoing revalorisation process of Yucatec Maya and Mapudungun and works towards their destigmatisation, especially among youths. Furthermore, I show how the discursive space generated by these web comments and the language ideologies expressed therein become an arena for broader social debates which index the subordinated sociopolitical position of indigenous peoples in Latin American societies.