Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Strategic Bivalency in Latin and Spanish in Early Modern Spain |
| Author: | Kathryn A. Woolard |
| Institution: | University of California, San Diego |
| Author: | E. Nicholas Genovese |
| Institution: | San Diego State University |
| Linguistic Field: | Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics |
| Abstract: | This article examines a genre of literary texts in early modern Spain written to be readable in both Latin and Spanish. These texts provide explicit evidence of a phenomenon called “strategic bivalency.” They exemplify both the ideological erasure of language boundaries by experts and the purposeful mobilization of bivalent elements that belong simultaneously to two languages in contact. It is argued that by using such bivalency strategically, speakers and writers in contact zones create the effect of using two languages at once, and that this can be a political act. The texts examined here were composed to demonstrate the superiority of the Spanish language and thus to support Spanish political preeminence. The article addresses the import of the Latin-Spanish bivalent genre for language ideology and considers its implications for understanding of modern bivalent practices and of languages as discrete systems. |
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This article appears in Language in Society Vol. 36, Issue 4, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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