Banal interculturalism. Latin Americans in Elephant & Castle

This paper discusses banal interculturalism as produced in an interview situation with migrants of Latin American background in London. Banal interculturalism emerges within discursive semiotic processes that allow the participants to display their (cultural) knowledge about co-ethnics and their practices, to position themselves in opposition to the ‘others’ within diaspora, and to justify their, typically negative, views towards other migrants. Sources of that knowledge can be experiential, though in most cases consist of hearsay evidence. This notion may assist intercultural communication scholars in understanding how intra-group relations are conceived and the consequences for migrants of the discourses they themselves spread within the wider group

Policing the Spanish language debate: verbal hygiene and the Spanish language academy (Real Academia Española)

This article takes a contemporary, socio-political approach to the study of the Real Academia Española (RAE) and its role in Spanish language matters. I examine the Academy’s contribution to current language debates and consider the language ideologies present in discussions of language standardisation. My investigation is framed by general and Spanish-specific works on language ideologies (e.g. Lippi-Green 1997; Schieffelin et al. 1998; Mar-Molinero 2004; Del Valle and Gabriel-Stheeman 2002). In particular, I examine how Academicians become ‘agents’ of institutional language ideologies [‘verbal hygienists’ in Cameron’s (1995) terms] by reinforcing a particular definition of the Spanish language. I critically analyse a selection of press articles (El País, ABC) and Academy publications which discuss the role, use and current state of the language. These provide evidence that language ideological debates are widespread in Spanish news media, and that the RAE takes the lead, as part of its panhispanic language policy