Spanish in Context - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2006

Although the significance of many other dimensions of variation in the data of Spanish historical linguistics is well recognised, the importance of studying variation in register has been underestimated and its feasibility questioned. This is in striking contrast to English historical linguistics, in which the study of register on the basis of electronic corpora is comparatively far advanced. This paper is a small-scale investigation of a 15th-century Spanish text, Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho (hereinafter referred to as Corbacho), whose author is clearly making an attempt to represent, perhaps stereotypically, different contemporary registers. It shows how, through a combination of statistical analysis and philological sensitivity, register-based linguistic variables can be recovered from a relatively short, multi-register text.

Este artículo investiga el proceso lingüístico de análisis, esto significa el uso de formas verbales perifrásticas en lugar de las formas sintéticas, en el español utilizado en California en el siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX. El artículo se centra en el incremento en el uso de la perífrasis ir a + infinitivo. Se utilizar un córpora de 185 cartas personales y oficiales escritas entre 1800 y 1930. En la actualidad el córpora contiene 85,000 palabras que aparecen en cartas escritas por 86 informantes diferentes (28 mujeres y 58 hombres). Se realiza análisis estadístico con SPSS de los 420 casos de las variantes que expresan tiempo futuro. La variable dependiente de tiempo futuro está correlacionada con las variables independientes de género, período histórico, y estilo. Los datos muestran que las mujeres usan la forma perifrástica, ir a + infinitivo, con mayor frecuencia que los hombres desde comienzos del siglo XIX. Además se observa que se acelera el uso de la perífrasis hacia la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Finalmente se muestra que los hombres adoptan la variante analítica para expresan tiempo futuro a mitad del siglo XIX y la usan con una frecuencia similar a la de las mujeres.

This paper discusses the role of sociolinguistics in the development of historical linguistics in general, and then examines the particular importance that sociolinguistics has for the linguistic history of Spain and Spanish America. Particular attention is given to the relevance of accommodation theory (Giles, 1980), dialect contact theory (Trudgill, 1986), and social network theory (Milroy & Milroy, 1985) to an understanding of the way that Spanish developed in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. A series of koineizations took place in Central and Southern Spain, in the Balkans, and in the Americas, resulting from the processes of social and dialect mixing which the Reconquest of Islamic Spain, the expulsion of the Peninsular Jews, and the settlement of the American colonies entailed. The main conclusion from this approach to the history of Spanish is that linguistic history should not be regarded as a linear process, but one which is discontinuous, full of blind alleys, hiccups, and new starts. Sociolinguistics has taught language historians, including those working with Spanish, that it is not true to say that ‘language changes’; what happens is that speakers change language.

Although ser and estar have been studied extensively (Luján 1981; Clements 1988; Leonetti 1994; Fernández Leborans 1999; Geeslin 2005), less is known about how the use of these copulas varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. To date, sociolinguistic research has been conducted on Spanish in the United States (Kirschner and Stephens 1988; Silva-Corvalán 1994), in Mexico (Gutiérrez 1992), and in Venezuela (de Jonge 1993), showing that some features (i.e. adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect copula choice in Spanish. The current study extends this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Galicia, where both Spanish and Galician co-exist. Our statistical analysis of a group of 56 intergenerational participants examines both social and linguistic variables as indicators of trends in language variation in relation to copula choice. Our findings support previous studies and contribute new knowledge of copula use in Galicia and of language change in a contact situation.

This study analyzes the sociolinguistic distribution of /s/-aspiration, one of the realizations of syllable-final /s/ in Uruguayan border Spanish. It discusses aspiration as a new variant which is entering the dialect through the speech of the upper classes, in a process opposite to what has been reported by studies of (s) aspiration elsewhere. Because border Spanish is highly stigmatized and stereotypically a variety that maintains syllable-final (s) as full sibilants, aspiration enters the dialect as a prestige marker owing to its identification with the linguistic model of the speech of Montevideo. Data analysis reveals social and linguistic factors that condition the variable, and explores the role of aspiration as an ultra-local marker that has been incorporated by social groups who, by converging their speech with that of Montevideo, cause it to diverge from the local norm.

This paper reports on a corpus-based comparison of the use of taboo words amongst middle/upper class teenage girls in London and Madrid. Two corpora of spontaneous conversation were used for the comparison; these showed that the most frequent words used by both groups had sexual reference, followed by words to do with bodily functions. It also pointed to a higher frequency of taboo words in the London girls’ conversations, while the Madrid girls had a slightly higher preference for sexual words. The qualitative part of the study, which deals with the reasons for teenagers’ use of taboo words and with their various functions in the discourse, reveals that special emphasis is put on phatic use.

Una investigación del lenguaje utilizado para representar e identificar a las mujeres en las secciones de política en cuatro de los diarios españoles de mayor difusión y calidad demuestra que existen usos innovadores del español que podrían presagiar una posición discursiva más central para el género gramatical femenino español: referencias cada vez más simétricas entre los sexos; uso frecuente de la feminización de cargos, y de descriptores y profesiones de mujeres individuales, incluyendo el uso del sustantivo o pronombre femeninos para denotar grupos mixtos. El género masculino resulta inadecuado como genérico; por esta razón los periodistas prefieren el uso de sustantivos en masculino y femenino, o de sustantivos no sexuados o metonímicos, o incluso de la arroba @ para denotar grupos mixtos.