Mónica Baselga, University Jaume I
The Spanish Language is already the second most spoken language worldwide and it even competes for the title of lingua franca. In an attempt to unify all the different variations of the language, most of the international organizations use the so-called international Spanish. In this contribution, I will use the theory of the linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992) to explain which variation achieves the status of international language and how. At first, during the colonialism, duress was the main mean to expand and impose the Spanish language. However, nowadays, the imposition is more subtle. Although South America has a greater presence and influence on the international scene than Spain and Spanish becomes a working language of the UN before Spain even joined it, the main headquarter of the institution regulating the language is still located in Madrid.
Motivated by the change of status of the European Spanish, in this contribution I wonder if the language used in the UN achieves the acceptability among the speakers of such variation. The study was designed with a qualitative methodology allowing to understand the attitudes and motivations of the interviewees (N=4). The interviewees were law students who were familiar with the international law and had previously attended a course on the matter. In this contribution, I aim to discover whether the speakers of European Spanish, specially lawyers, reject the usage of variations and even mark their positive superiority. In order to interpret the data, I will take as a reference different contributions on intergrupal conflicts (Allport, 1979; Turner and Tajfel, 1979) and define groups by their spoken linguistic variation and their possible linguicism towards other varieties.
References
ALLPORT W. Gordon (1979), The Nature of Prejudice, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, pp. 30-46.
PHILLIPSON, Robert (1992), «Linguistic imperialism and linguicism», in: Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: OUP, pp. 50-57.
Tafjel, TURNER, Jonathan (1979), An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict, England: University of Bristol.