Sociolinguistic Approaches to Dialectal, Sociolectal, and Idiolectal Variation in the Hispanophone World

doi:10.1017/9781316779194.025

24 - Sociolinguistic Approaches to Dialectal, Sociolectal, and Idiolectal Variation in the Hispanophone World

from Part IV - Spanish in Social, Geographic, and Historical Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2018

Daniel Erker

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Kimberly L. Geeslin

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Kimberly L. Geeslin: Affiliation:
Indiana University

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Summary

This chapter surveys the study of Spanish in its social context, focusing on patterns of linguistic variation that emerge at different levels of social organization. These levels range in scale from the very large (e.g., variation between groups of people defined by region, nation, sex, age, social class, etc.) to the very small (intra-speaker variation across time and social contexts). The discussion examines sociolinguistic variation along a range of central topics in Hispanic linguistics, including (1) the colonial expansion of Castilian, (2) the emergence of a dialectological tradition interested in the linguistic zonification of Latin America, (3) the application of the quantitative paradigm of modern sociolinguistics to the study of Spanish, and (4) the capacity for Spanish in the United States to illuminate the dynamics of contact-induced language change. The literature engaged here shows how patterns of dialectal, sociolectal, and idiolectal variation are interconnected, arising from a common source: individual speakers, who construct and reproduce their multidimensional identities through linguistic practice.

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics , pp. 529 - 562

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316779194.025 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2018

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