The Politics of Language and Linguistic Reclamation

Sor Juana's mastery of multiple languages—Spanish, Latin, Nahuatl, indigenous Mexican languages, and others—represented both colonial education and her own linguistic agency. Language is a primary site of colonization: colonizers impose their language, suppress indigenous languages, and control discourse. Yet language is also a tool of resistance: to speak, write, and think in one's own or multiple languages asserts autonomy. In postcolonial contexts, linguistic reclamation—reviving indigenous languages, code-switching, creating new creole and hybrid linguistic forms—becomes decolonial practice. Sor Juana's multilingualism allowed her to access forbidden knowledge while maintaining connection to indigenous Mexican worlds. For decolonization, linguistic rights matter profoundly: the ability to educate in indigenous languages, to publish in multiple languages, and to claim linguistic identity are acts of sovereignty. Language shapes what can be thought and who is recognized as a knower.