Girl, interrupted : the distinctive history of Galician women's narrative

This paper addresses the anomaly that whilst there are increasing numbers of Galician-language women poets and writers of children's literature, women prose writers are still few and far between. Beginning with a discussion of debates in feminist criticism that call attention to the role of influence on authorship, I argue that the fragmented history of women's writing in Galicia, due to the perceived absence of a Galician female public voice in the gap between Rosalía's Follas novas (1880) and Herrera Garrido's Néveda (1920), appears to leave women writers without a literary foremother during the crucialformative years of Galician cultural identity. I then postulate the existence, during the complex, bilingual fin de século (c.1885-1916), of a 'lost generation' of women writers whose largely Castilian-language texts show the seeds of a cross-generational dialogue that could potentially bridge this gap. Finally, I ask how the fragmented history of women's writing in Galicia continues to affect women writing today

What variational linguistics can learn from Galician

This short overview reviews, in the first part, some of the most important fields of investigation where studies on Galician have contributed to variational linguistics, including macro- and micro-sociolinguistic studies (sections 1-3). The second part (sections 4-7) postulates some possible theoretical and empirical areas which we recommend to be included in future research. We propose a critical application of new models of linguistic variation, including recent frameworks such as studies on grammaticalisation, OT, intonational phonology, etc., but also call for the inclusion of established insights into language variation common in the European tradition. The high concentration of research institutions and the strongly dynamic situation of contemporary Galician could serve as an empirical touchstone for these theoretical frameworks, and Galician linguistics should apply them in a critical, flexible and creative way. This means that research on Galician will not only learn from theory but also contribute to it. We also briefly mention some of the areas where the studies of Galician have already contributed some important results to an overall perspective on linguistic variation

Modes of representation in contemporary Galician visual poetry

Visual poetry in Galicia had a plural and discontinuous existence in the twentieth century'! Its development in Galicia follows national (Spanish) and international artistic practices, while also engaging in the configuration of a local, national, and transnational Galician identity. The practice of different styles of visual poetry shows a rich line of creativity, especially in the last four decades. Their approaches coincide with sociocultural and economic changes in Spain, such as the end of the dictatorship in 1975, the consequent normalization of the Galician language, and more recently the progressive influence of globalization. This essay considers how current Galician visual poets reconceptualize these issues in the context of an international cultural and visual aesthetics

The effects of language dominance switch in bilinguals: Galician new speakers' speech production and perception

It has long been debated whether speech production and perception remain flexible in adulthood. The current study investigates the effects of language dominance switch in Galician new speakers (neofalantes) who are raised with Spanish as a primary language and learn Galician at an early age in a bilingual environment, but in adolescence, decide to switch to using Galician almost exclusively, for ideological reasons. Results showed that neofalantes pattern with Spanish-dominants in their perception and production of mid-vowel and fricative contrasts, but with Galician-dominants in their realisation of unstressed word-final vowels, a highly salient feature of Galician. These results are taken to suggest that despite early exposure to Galician, high motivation and almost exclusive Galician language use post-switch, there are limitations to what neofalantes can learn in both production and perception, but that the hybrid categories they appear to develop may function as opportunities to mark identity within a particular community

The Reception of Galician Performances and (Re)translations of Shakespeare

This presentation will deal with the reception of performances, translations and retranslations of Shakespeare’s plays into the Galician language. As is well-known, Galician is a Romance language which historically shared a common origin with Portuguese in the Iberian Peninsula, and which had a different evolution due to political reasons, i.e. the independence of Portugal and the recentralization of Spain after a long partition with the so called Catholic monarchs. As a consequence, Galician ceased to be the language of power and culture as it was during the Middle Ages, and was spoken by peasants and the lower classes in private contexts for centuries. With the disappearance of Francoism in the 1970s, the revival of Galician and its use as a language of culture was felt as a key issue by the Galician intelligentsia and by the new autonomous government formed in 1981. In order to increase the number of speakers of the language and to give it cultural respectability, translations and performances of prominent playwrights, and particularly those by Shakespeare were considered instrumental. This article will analyse the use of Shakespeare’s plays as an instrument of gentrification of the Galician language, so that the association with Shakespeare would confer a marginalized language social respectability and prestige

Language policies on the ground : parental language management in urban Galician homes

Recent language policy and planning research reveals how policy-makers endorse the interests of dominant social groups, marginalise minority languages and perpetuate systems of sociolinguistic inequality. In the Castilian-dominated Galician linguistic landscape, this study examines the rise of grassroots level actors or agents (i.e. parents, family members, and other speakers of minority Galician) who play a significant role in interpreting and implementing language policy on the ground. The primary focus of this study is to investigate the impact of top-down language policies inside home domain, it looks at how the individual linguistic practices and ideologies of Galician parents act as visible and/or invisible language planning measures influencing their children’s language learning. However, these individual linguistic ideologies and language management decisions are difficult to detect because they are implicit, subtle, informal, and often hidden from the public eye, and therefore, frequently overlooked by language policy researchers and policy makers. Drawing from multiple ethnographic research methods including observations, in-depth fieldwork interviews, focus group discussions and family language audits with thirty-two Galician parents, this study attempts to ascertain whether these parents can restore intergenerational transmission of Galician and if their grassroots level interrogation of the dominant discourse could lead to bottom-up language policies

Transnational encounters : crossing borders in Galician translation and interpreting studies

Exploring the ways in which languages and cultures interact across borders becomes particularly relevant in our increasingly interconnected world, as it ultimately enables an in depth understanding of how societies influence each other. Translation and interpreting, as mediating forces in transnational encounters, offer critical insights into this continuous crosscultural dialogue and negotiation. Of special interest for the Galician context, research into translation and interpreting —especially after the so-called cultural turn in the discipline— has often exposed asymmetrical power relations between languages and cultures and put forward alternatives to challenge them. Indeed, this has been one of the recurrent tropes in Galician Translation and Interpreting Studies scholarship since the 1990s

Ways of seeing language in nineteenth-century Galicia, Spain

This article discusses a language-ideological debate surrounding Galician between two Spanish intellectuals – one Andalusian, Juan Valera, and one Galician, Manuel Murguía – who clashed on the desirability of the literary cultivation of the language. This encounter is framed as a language ideological debate and interpreted in the context of Spain’s late nineteenth-century politics of regional and national identity