Las actitudes hacia el bilingüismo en las comunidades de habla hispánicas

El objeto del presente artículo es analizar, desde una perspectiva crítica, las principales líneas de investigación desarrolladas en el ámbito de la sociolingüística hispánica en las últimas dos o tres décadas sobre el tema de las actitudes hacia el bilingüismo y hacia los fenómenos lingüísticos propios del mismo

Los grados de la cortesía verbal: reflexiones en torno a algunas estrategias y recursos lingüísticos en el español peninsular contemporáneo

La concepción y las manifestaciones de lo que habitualmente entendemos por cortesía lingüística difieren considerablemente en la conversación ordinaria y en otras manifestaciones interaccionales caracterizadas por el conflicto y la polémica entre los participantes. Partiendo de la necesaria distinción, a nuestro juicio, entre usos verbales socialmente aceptables, por un lado, y aquellos a los que cabe calificar con más propiedad como corteses (o descorteses), por otro, tanto unos como otros, presentan en estos discursos unos perfiles muy diferentes

Reflexiones en torno al concepto de convergencia lingüística y su aplicación a las variedades del español en contacto con el catalán. Aspectos estructurales y sociolingüísticos

In view of the terminological and conceptual ambiguity that often appears to adorn some terms in the linguistics on contact varieties, and more particularly those that involve typologically similar languages, efforts were recently made to draw up a trial classification of the phenomena present in bilingual discourse that affect Spanish in communities in which Catalan is spoken. The concept of convergence is one of the most widely used in contact linguistics. In general, convergence is used to refer to the reduced potential for conflict and the strengthening of the formal and functional compatibility between the languages. Nevertheless, in specific cases and depending on the author they are being analysed by, the way these possibilities are interpreted can vary, sometimes to a considerable extent. In fact, in the contact varieties that are being dealt with here, we can find convergence phenomena that correspond to different conceptions of the term.Dada la ambigüedad terninológica y conceptual con que aparecen adornados a menudo algunos térninos en la lingüística sobre las variedades de contacto, y en particular aquellas que tienen como protagonistas a lenguas tipológicamente muy similares, recientemente hemos realizado un ensayo de clasificación de los fenómenos del discurso bilingüe que afectan al español en las comunidades del ámbito lingüístico catalán. El concepto de convergencia es uno de los mas usados en la lingüística de contacto. Por lo general, se habla de convergencia para caracterizar la reducción del potencial conflicto y el refuerzo de la compatibilidad formal y funcional entre las lenguas, pero la interpretación de estas posibilidades en el análisis de casos concretos difiere, en ocasiones considerablemente, de unos autores a otros. De hecho en las variedades de contacto que nos ocupan podemos encontrar fenómenos de convergencia que responden a concepciones diferentes del término

Spanish and Catalan in the Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands are one of the autonomous regions of modern Spain, where both Catalan and Spanish are considered o‰cial languages and are widely spoken among the population. Historically, the main language of the region has been Catalan, brought to the islands during the Spanish Reconquest from the thirteenth century onwards. The presence of Spanish was noted much later, as a slow language substitution process starting in the sixteenth century took place. This article analyzes the functional distribution of both languages today, as well as consequences of secular language contact and some attitudinal aspects of Balearic social bilingualism

Constraint factors in the formulation of questions in conflictual discourse: an analysis of spanish face-to-face election debates

This paper presents a study of the constraint factors that condition the form and functions of questions in a corpus composed of several face-to-face election debates that took place in Spain during different election campaigns. Some of these factors are of a distributional nature, such as the position of the questions in the politician’s turns at talk, with final positions and fragments of simultaneous speech being the most favourable contexts for the formulation of these utterances. Questions are also favoured by stylistic and rhetorical forces, such as those which lead the speaker to repeat questions or question formats within wider inquisitive sequences, which represent almost half the corpus. In addition, these communicative units are also influenced by institutional factors, such as the political role played by the candidates in the debates (government/opposition), as well as the political expectations and identities that the politicians seek to enhance, and which may vary in different moments of the election campaign

Comparative variationism for the study of language change: five centuries of competition amongst spanish deontic periphrases

Based on a corpus composed entirely of texts close to the pole of communicative immediacy, mainly private letters from the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries (c. 1960), this paper analyses the results of a variationist study on the historical evolution undergone by the Spanish modal periphrases with three distinct auxiliary verbs (haber, tener, deber). Using the heuristic tools of the comparative method, the data show that variation has been constrained by a handful of common factor groups over almost five centuries. Nonetheless, with the odd exception, these factors have conditioned each verb in a different way. Moreover, the sense of this variation changes as time goes by, with especially relevant reorganisation in the first part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, there is a notable association between these constraints and the degree of markedness and the frequency of the conditioning contexts, giving support to a usage-based approach to language change in which cognitive processes such as entrenchment play a decisive role. These data also allow a particular profile to be traced for each modal verb in the history of Spanish, in which tener and haber finally undergo a complementary distribution, whereas deber follows a different pattern. After several centuries of stagnation, tener becomes the star in the deontic firmament of spontaneous communication, diffusing abruptly as a change from below in the twentieth century, and replacing haber, which had been the unmarked variant for centuries

Valenciano y castellano. Actitudes lingüísticas en la sociedad valenciana

Este artículo estudia las actitudes sociolingüísticas en una comunidad de habla valenciana, una región de España donde una porción considerable de la población habla tanto el castallano como el catalán. Los datos empíricos de esta investigación demuestran la progresiva dignificación del idioma indígena-el dialecto valenciano del catálán-en la actitud de los hablantes, especialmente cuando se comparan estos resultados con los obtenidos en estudios anteriores. No obstante, hay una relación estrecha entre el progreso social y cultural y el castellano, particularmente entre la clase sociocultural y económica más alta de la sociedad así como entre los hablantes monolingües del castallano, los cuales representan un porcentaje importante de la comunidad entera. Estos factores retardan una normalización más rápida del catalán en esta región, constituyendo un patrón sociolingüístico distinto del de la comunidad vecina catalana

Funciones y estructuras discursivas del moderador en el debate político

In this paper the author analyzes some aspects related to the moderator role in a political speech sub-genre, a face-to-face debate between two Spanish political leaders in the 1993 general elections of this country. In the first part of the work and from a structural point of view, some cases of triadic sequences are analyzed. For that purpose two interpretative factors are used, the simultaneity/succession axis and the direct allocution/dellocution axis, respectively. The combination of both enables to distinguish some structures in which the moderator appears as one of the vertices of the interlocutive triangle. Finally, in the last section of the work, some attention is dedicated to the functions accomplished by the moderator. Some of these functions are considered as obligatory, like the mediatior or the adjudicator roles as well as the introduction or closing of liminarIes sequences. Others are particular functions, not found in all cases, like the provocator role or the formation of coalitions with the audience

Perspectivas (socio)lingüísticas complementarias en el estudio de la variación y el cambio lingüístico en español

The purpose of this article is to show the form in which diverse theoretical approaches to the study of language with different (socio)linguistic interests –if they are classified this way or not in the specialized bibliography– can achieve diverse, but also complementary results, in the analysis of variation and language change in Spanish. From this general aim, the paper is devoted to discuss two interrelated objects: a) to review the main sides of contemporary sociolinguistic research, highlighting those having a clearer relationship with disciplines that also show an interest for the study of language in communicative context, like pragmatics and the analysis of interactions; and b) approaching from these different perspectives some outstanding questions in the research of Spanish language from synchronic as well as diachronic points of view. In this regard, the author comments diverse references of recent Hispanic bibliography about some topics (discourse markers, conversational routines, paralinguistic aspects of conversations, code-switching, pronouns, politeness strategies…), including his own research about some of them. As a main conclusion of this review, and contrary to more purist and restrictive approaches to the study of language, he concludes that this community of theoretical and methodological interests is not only licit from a scientific point of view, but also very beneficial for present sociolinguistics, whose seminal objective should be the analysis of language in social as well as in communicative context.O obxectivo deste artigo é mostrar a forma en que diversas teorías de raiceira (socio)lingüística –sexan catalogadas ou non como tal na bibliografía especializada– poden presentar intereses diversos, pero tamén complementarios, na análise dos feitos de variación e cambio lingüístico en español. A partir de aquí, o traballo destínase ao exame de dúas cuestións interrelacionadas: a) explicar as principais vertentes da investigación sociolingüística contemporánea, destacando principalmente aquelas que teñen un entroncamento máis claro con disciplinas próximas, como a pragmática e a análise das interacciós; e b) tratar desde estas perspectivas algunhas cuestións relevantes na investigación recente sobre a lingua española, que foron obxecto de estudios nos cales se imbrican intereses sociolingüísticos e pragmático-discursivos (marcadores discursivos, rutinas conversacionais, aspectos paralingüísticos da conversación, cambio de código, pronomes de tratamento, estratexias de cortesía…). Para isto o autor sérvese de diversos exemplos da bibliografía hispánica máis recente, entre os que se inclúen algunhas das súas investigacións sobre os ditos temas. Unha das principais conclusións do artigo é que a comunidade de intereses entre diferentes disciplinas non só é cientificamente lícita, senón sumamente beneficiosa para a sociolingüística contemporánea, que debe ter como obxecto de estudio a análise da lingua no seu contexto non soamente social senón tamén comunicativo

Datos sobre el uso de los pronombres átonos de tercera persona en el habla de Valencia. Aproximación sociolingüística

En este artículo se analiza el uso de los pronombres átonos de tercera persona en hablantes de un área bilingüe de la Comunidad Valenciana