Related Papers
Negotiating local identity: rural migration and sociolinguistic perception in urban Asturias - Sonia Barnes
Lengua y migración / Language and Migration Revista de Lingüística
This study examines the connection between place and linguistic performance in the language contact situation between Asturian and Spanish in the city of Gijón (Asturias), and the role that rural migration had on the place-based indexicality of Asturian linguistic features. Migration from rural to urban areas in the 19th and 20th centuries resulted in an intensification of the contact between Asturian and Spanish, accentuating the contrast between the two languages and the socio-demographic characteristics that were associated with each. Today in Gijón we find a hybrid variety characterized by the variable incorporation of features from Asturian. Using historical information, sociolinguistic interview data, and perception experiments , I show that the variation observed in the speech of Gijón is highly influenced by the conflict between regional and urban identity. These results build on prior sociolinguistic research that examines the connection between geographic space and linguistic practice, showing that speakers use language to relate to place. More generally , it supports focusing on linguistic practice at the local level to explain variation. Keywords: Sociolinguistics, language contact, language and place, place-based identity, morpho-phonological variation, sociolinguistic perception, Asturian Spanish. Negociación de identidades locales: migración rural y percepción sociolingüística en la Asturias urbana Este estudio examina la relación entre la localización geográfica y la actuación lingüística en la situación de contacto que se da entre asturiano y español en la ciudad de Gijón (Asturias), y el papel que la migración rural ha tenido en la indexicalidad regional de los rasgos lingüísticos del asturiano. La migración de zonas rurales a zonas urbanas de los siglos XIX y XX resultó en una intensificación del contacto entre asturiano y español, la cual acentuó el contraste entre las dos lenguas y las características socio-demográficas ligadas a cada una de ellas. Hoy en día en Gijón hallamos una variedad lingüística híbrida que se caracteriza por la incorporación variable de rasgos del asturiano. Utilizando información histórica, datos procedentes de entrevistas sociolingüísticas y experimentos de percepción, se muestra en este estudio que la variación observada en el habla de Gijón está influida por el conflicto que existe entre la identidad regional y la urbana. Estos resultados constituyen un avance dentro de los estudios sociolingüísticos que examinan la conexión entre el espacio geográfico y la práctica lingüística, mostrando que los hablantes utilizan los recursos del habla para vincularse a su localización geográfica. De modo más general, este estudio apoya la idea de enfocarse en la práctica lingüística a nivel local para explicar los patrones de variación en la lengua. Palabras claves: Sociolingüística, contacto de lenguas, lengua y localización, identidad regional, variación morfo-fonológica, percepción sociolingüística, español de Asturias.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Asturian: resurgence and impeding demise of a minority language in the Iberian Peninsula
2004 •
Xulio Viejo Fernández
Critical Inquiries in Language Studies
Language-power relationship, linguistic identity and the struggle for survival: the case of Asturian in Oviedo, Spain
2022 •
Patricia Gubitosi
The analysis of a community’s linguistic landscape has proven to be an excellent tool not only in portraying, but also in evaluating and interpreting what languages are used in a single place (and what languages seem to be invisible), what the vitality of any of these languages is, and the relative influence that each linguistic variety within that community has and how it relates to the other varieties in terms of power, visibility and functionality. The presence or absence of a language in the public space conveys a message that directly and indirectly exposes its significance versus its marginality in the community. The present study analyzes languages used in the public space of a neighborhood in Oviedo, the capital city of Asturias in Spain, where Spanish is the majority language and Asturian is the regional language. While Asturian is present in some of the official street signs, stores’ signages only utilize Spanish along with other minority languages such as Arabic. Using a mixed research approach, this article analyzes attitudes and power relations among Spanish, Asturian and other immigrant languages used in the LL of a neighborhood in Oviedo, Asturias, while also revealing public perceptions of language hierarchies and prestige in the area.
From folklorismo to asturianismu: The franquista roots of Left-wing regionalism in Asturias
Patrick W. Zimmerman
The years immediately preceding and following Francisco Franco's death saw a general increase in the support for Asturian regionalism and nationalism, both in the political and the cultural arenas. However, it is clear that these new movements of the Transition were not totally novel but descended from earlier interest in regional folklore and language amongst franquista scholars. The Asturian language, flag, the Cross of Victory, bagpipes, regional dances, and traditional dress were all officially permitted under the dictatorship in certain forms, and in some cases, such as the religious symbolism of Covadonga, openly encouraged. The 1969 birth of the Asociación Amigos del Bable set an important precedent for the linguistic revival movement, representing the first tentative reevaluation of Asturian identity. The association, made up of a group of franquista intellectuals in the University and the Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, was in no way regionalist or nationalist in nature, fitting well within the regime’s standards for a “safe” organization that studied folklore and local traditions within the overarching umbrella of “Spain.” Although they saw themselves as an attempt to document a dying language and culture, the Amigos del Bable also called for a re-adoption of the language in the traditional genres of poetry and literature and their adaptation to some of the themes of the modern world. Although at no point did the group suggest that Asturianu should be either standardized or applied as a quotidian language of everyday life, this mild attempt to modernize the use of the language represented an important precedent for the regionalist groups that would soon follow. While there was no danger that any of the activities of the Amigos del Bable would directly threaten either the regime or the cultural hierarchy that it had constructed, it did serve to open the Pandora’s Box of linguistic and cultural revival in Asturias. While the Amigos del Bable belonged to a conservative tradition of folklore studies sponsored and encouraged by the regime itself, the linguistic revival movement that they spawned in the 1970s became one of the major public challenges to the regime within a year of Franco's death in 1975. A younger generation of politically active intellectuals split off from the Amigos del Bable to form the Conceyu Bable, the center of the nationalist cultural revival of the late 1970s. While Asturias had long been considered to have a unique region, culture, and language, it was not until the first Asturianistas articulated these ideas with the politics of opposition that the idea of Asturias as a separate nation or ethnicity appeared. By 1974, the conflation of the various forms of opposition to the regime was virtually complete; in this context, everyday use of Asturianu had become a symbol of resistance to the centralizing policies of Franco’s authoritarian regime. Thus, the regime’s cultural policies in Asturias were in many ways the author of their own antagonist, engendering the very regionalist movement that would eventually come to strongly reject the Castilian-dominated cultural hierarchy of the dictatorship.
Linguistic shift and community language: the effect of demographic factors in the Valencian region, Balearic Islands and Catalonia
2006 •
Raquel Casesnoves Ferrer
Language, collective identities and nationalism in Catalonia, and Spain in general
1995 •
ANDRÉS BARRERA-GONZÁLEZ
Borders within Borders: Contexts of Language Use and Local Identity Configuration in Southern Galicia
2014 •
Jaine Beswick
Language as a diacritical in terms of cultural and resistance identities in Galicia
Fernando Ramallo
In this paper, we present an approximation of the relationship between language and identity in Galicia. Specifically, we focus on the discursive strategies reproduced by subjects in processes of identity construction. In light of the fast socio-economic changes caused by the current phase of globalization, there is a need for identities to be (re)-defined, and within this context minority languages have begun to take special relevance in traditional spheres, becoming a category of resistance. Here we shall analyze the strategies developed by social actors in order to maintain an identity of their own within the context of globalization, with particular attention to the Galician language and its social representations. Furthermore, we shall verify if these representations differ from the rural to the urban world, or if these two worlds also tend to merge (processes of suburbanization and contra-urbanization).
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Language and identity in Catalonia
1984 •
Cristina Sanz
Acta Baltico-Slavica, 45
(Non)fuzziness of Identity in the Spanish-Portuguese Borderland: The Case of the Linguistic Community of A Fala de Xálima (Spain
2021 •
Bartosz Dondelewski
This article analyses the social dynamics observable in a conversation with a minority language activist about the neighbouring speech communities. The study demonstrates that the local variety, along with its socially meaningful context, can be an important factor for the interactionally constructed local identity. The interviewee is a member of the community of practice of A Fala de Xálima, a Galician-Portuguese Romance minoritized language, which has about 5,000 speakers; they live in the Spanish province of Cáceres (on the border with Portugal). The analysis applies the ontological and epistemological principles of sociocultural linguistics in order to identify some indexical interactional orientations, such as stance and ideology.
