The Positive Relationship Between Indigenous Language Use and Community-Based Well-Being in Four Nahua Ethnic Groups in Mexico

Public Significance Statement Indigenous communities suffer strong assimilation pressures and their languages are falling out of use. Our study, however, contributes to solving this pressing societal problem by showing that the use of heritage languages positively relates to their speakers' well-being. This relationship has been confirmed for Nahuatl-speaking communities in four different regions of Mexico, where language loss is one of the biggest challenges faced by Indigenous people today. Objective: In this article, we examine the relationship between Indigenous language use and community-based well-being among four Nahua ethnic groups in Mexico, taking into account the role of positive emotions related to speaking the heritage language as a mediator of the influence of its use in the family domain on community-based well-being. Method: We employ an emic community-based well-being scale, a second scale measuring the use of Nahuatl and Spanish across different domains of social life, and a third scale measuring positive emotions related to the use of Nahuatl in order to examine the relationship between Nahuatl use and community-based well-being, in a sample (N = 552) of Indigenous Nahua participants (55.4% female, M (age) = 37.9, SD = 18.3) coming from four different regions of Mexico. Results: Results from the mediation analysis revealed that the relation between the frequency of Nahuatl use and community-based well-being in the total sample is partially mediated by experiencing positive emotions related with Nahuatl use. Furthermore, the relation between Nahuatl use and community-based well-being was also found to be moderated by group membership. Conclusions: Our study confirms that the role of heritage language use for Nahua communities in Mexico is beneficial and that this effect is also significant in communities strongly affected by language loss and assimilation.