The alphabets that Spanish missionaries developed in the sixteenth century to record Amerindian languages were intimately tied to the evangelizing and civilizing projects of colonialism. This article highlights the consequences of missionaries’ alphabetic ideologies for engagement, in writing as well as speech, with native speakers of highland Mayan languages in Guatemala. In their alphabetic metadiscourse, missionaries juxtaposed Spanish-speaking learners and indigenous speakers in different and unequal roles for linguistic participation. Through close examination of missionary sources, I demonstrate that missionary ideologies of written language not only articulated script with speech but also delineated knowledge circulation and shaped the power dynamics implicated in language’s actual use in colonial Guatemalan society.

中文翻译：

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转换信函：危地马拉殖民地高地的元字母话语和语言参与

西班牙传教士在 16 世纪开发的用于记录美洲印第安语言的字母表与殖民主义的传福音和文明项目密切相关。本文重点介绍了传教士的字母意识形态对危地马拉高地玛雅语言母语人士的参与、写作和演讲的影响。在他们的字母元话语中，传教士将讲西班牙语的学习者和土著讲者并列在语言参与的不同和不平等的角色中。通过对传教士资料的仔细研究，我证明了书面语言的传教意识形态不仅将文字与语音结合起来，而且描绘了知识流通，并塑造了语言在殖民地危地马拉社会中实际使用的权力动态。