FRIAS Junior Researcher Conference - Spanish as a pluricentric language? – Status, prestige and communicative value of regional (standard) varieties of Spanish

The impact of economic and geocultural globalisation on language ideologies and patterns of language use in society has established itself as a major topic in sociolinguistics. It is claimed that in the context of globalisation the visibility and legitimacy of local speech in public discourse have increased (Androutsopoulos 2009). In the particular case of Spanish this has led researchers to pose the question whether Spanish is a pluricentric language (Thompson 1992, Bierbach 2000, Oesterreicher 2000). Although the RAE has been reluctant in embracing the view that Latin American varieties of Spanish are on equal footing with the Castilian standard, it has now adopted a “rhetoric of acceptance of linguistic diversity and variation” (Villa & del Valle 2014). However, several questions remain open, such as how many varieties can be considered standards, who are the norm setting authorities, and, on a more general level, does the concept of universally valid linguistic standards still have significance in global and highly complex linguistic markets?

The aim of this conference is to examine uses, perceptions and ideologies of regional (standard?) varieties in national and transnational hispanic speech communities. Linguists and language practitioners are invited to reflect on uses and effects of regionally marked and supposedly unmarked linguistic resources in different domains of public language use, as well as on the representation of regional varieties in normative reference works.

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Organisers:

Anja Schütz, Eva Staudinger (Romanisches Seminar)