Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-414) and index.

Introduction : the field of discourse production -- Part I. The scope of reducci�on -- Perpetual reducci�on in a land of frontiers -- To make themselves new men -- Part II. Converting words -- From field to genre and habitus -- First words : from Spanish to Maya -- Commensuration : Maya as a matrix language -- The grammar of reducci�on and the art of speaking -- The canonical word -- Part III: Into the breach : the dispersion of Maya reducido -- The scripted landscape -- Petitions as prayers in the field of reducci�on -- Cross talk in the books of Chilam Balam -- Epilogue : full circle.

This pathbreaking synthesis of history, anthropology, and linguistics gives an unprecedented view of the first two hundred years of the Spanish colonization of the Yucatec Maya. Drawing on an extraordinary range and depth of sources, William F. Hanks documents for the first time the crucial role played by language in cultural conquest: how colonial Mayan emerged in the age of the cross, how it was taken up by native writers to become the language of indigenous literature, and how it ultimately became the language of rebellion against the system that produced it. Converting Words includes origi.

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