The Emergence of Standard Spanish in the American Continent

Abstract

The circumstances that intervened in the formation of the standard variety of Spanish in the American continent included the essentially urban character of the Conquest, the social and educational background of early immigrants from Spain, the prestige of Spanish in the sixteenth century, and the strong positive attitudes of the conquistadores toward their mother tongue. This paper outlines the most relevant phonological features of Castilian Spanish for the history of Spanish-American dialects, the traditional dichotomy of cultured and popular speech modes, and the impact of the Spanish written norm on researchers' perceptions of Spanish-American dialects. Addressing the linguistic and sociopsychological gaps between the standard variety of Spanish and its respective marginal dialects in the American subcontinent, and highlighting the historically perceived hiatus between mainstream and popular Spanish, it assumes: (1) the existence of a relatively homogeneous dialect used in the most formal spheres of public interaction in modern urban communities, and (2) the progressive emergence of a "rurban" dialect with features of both educated and noneducated Spanish. Finally, given the rapid structural changes of Latin American society in general, it proposes new directions for the study of social and geographic dialects in the major urban centers of the continent.Over the past two decades in Latin America, there has been an increasing interest in issues concerned with the language variety spoken in the most important capital cities of the continent. One of the commitments to research since the mid1960s has thus been the study of the norma culta (standard), spoken by middle-class, college-educated adults inhabiting capital cities (Lavandera 1974b). The international project entitled Programa Coordinado de la Norma Lingüística de las Principales Ciudades de Iberoamérica y España has been a fruitful one, and several volumes have appeared in different parts of the Spanish-speaking world. 1 The impact on the de lineation of research in Spanish-speaking communities throughout the world is, however, not commensurate with this prolific bibliography. This is not to imply that the commendable results of first-rate scholars have been totally neglected by the community of researchers interested in Latin American (LA) varieties of Spanish; on the contrary, the project has inspired many similar regional and national studies. However, in spite of such acceptance, one finds that the orien tation of research in LA urban varieties has been uneven and diffuse and that a number of equally renowned scholars have taken an opposing stance. 2 For his encouragement and support during the writing of this paper, I am indebted to Dr. Ernesto Barrera, former chair of Spanish and Portuguese, SDSU. For valuable suggestions in form and content, I am grateful to my colleagues Thomas Case,

Afro-Mestizo Speech from Costa Chica, Guerrero

“…Any pressure for the afromestizos to adopt a more "prestigious" variety of Spanish would certainly have been mitigated by the greater strength of the dominant speech community. The colonization by blacks and conquistadores led to an interesting linguistic mix of "educated" and "uneducated" speakers; the resulting local speech, however, is more consistent with "popular" varieties in other areas of Mexico and Latin America (Hidalgo 1990) than with those considered "standard," despite its early identification with "old" or "African" Spanish.…”

Guest Editor's Foreword

“…However, the ephemeral purist trend of the 1980s gave continuity to the research of the 1960s which promoted the study of the norma culta in several capitals of the Spanish-speaking world (cf. Hidalgo 1990).…”

“…Althoff s subjects are candidates for interdialect varieties of Mexican Spanish. With sufficient exposure to autonomous urban varieties, the speakers from Cuijla may well become "rurban" speakers, as defined by Hidalgo (1990).…”

Aproximaciones a la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia

“…Hidalgo, 1990Hidalgo, , 1997Valdés, 1978Valdés, , 1997. Sin embargo, recientemente se ha tratado de enfatizar las diversidad lingüística y la concientización dialectal (Leeman, 2005;Martínez, 2003).…”