Spanisch in Afrika/Afrika in Spanien. Sprachliche Charakteristika von Spanischsprecherinnen und Spanischsprechern aus Äquatorialguinea in Madrid

Abstract

In this paper, from the perspective of the migration context in Madrid, we look at the only officially Hispanophone country in Africa: Equatorial Guinea. After a detailed introduction to Equatorial Guinea’s history and languages, we offer an overview of the Equatoguinean migration to Spain and its current situation. In the main part of the article, we discuss three linguistic characteristics of Spanish spoken by people of Equatoguinean origin. In order to do so, we use a corpus of 24 sociolinguistic life-story interviews, conducted in Madrid in 2017 and 2018. The selected features represent different linguistic levels: syntax (variable use of prepositions in the construction ir ‘to go’ + preposition a or en + destination), semantics (use of the verbs oír ‘to hear’ and escuchar ‘to listen’), and pragmatics (discursive use of tío/tía ‘[literally:] uncle/aunt’). To gain a better understanding, we consider the sociolinguistic context of Equatorial Guinea and compare our results with other contact varieties of Spanish. Altogether, this study offers an insight into the Equatoguinean diaspora in Madrid and at the same time makes a contribution to the modern description of Equatoguinean Spanish.