Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures & Languages

Advisor

Jose del Valle

Committee Members

Ofelia Garcia

Miki Makihara

Subject Categories

Spanish Linguistics

Keywords

Español en Estados Unidos, Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española, Real Academia Española, glotopolítica, ideologías lingüísticas, lengua e identidad

Abstract

The North American Academy of the Spanish Language (henceforth ANLE, from the Spanish Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española), and more specifically, the discourses about Spanish in the US that emerge in certain moments of this institution’s history, will constitute the object of this study. ANLE was founded in 1973 and in 1980, after some controversial episodes, was finally accepted into the network of academies known as Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (henceforth ASALE), led by the main normative institution for Spanish, the Spanish Royal Academy (henceforth RAE, from the Spanish Real Academia Española). Through an analysis of a series of documents published by ANLE (mainly its newsletter, both print and electronic), as well as its participation in the international conferences organized by ASALE, we will present a historiographic description of the institution and we will identify the language ideologies that compose ANLE’s discourse on Spanish in the US and the Spanish-speaking community and will relate them to the larger discursive matrix controlled by RAE and the network of academies. This dissertation will offer, firstly, a view of how discourses on language in the US are mediated by contrasting views of national identity and the relation between language and ethnicity. Secondly, it shows how global trends (particularly Spain’s geopolitical interest in the US Latino population) relate to the emergence of new discourses on language and to the tactical redeployment of traditional institutions to meet new needs. The topic of Spanish in the US, which has attracted ever-growing interest over the last decades, both within the humanities and social sciences and in the public sphere, will be approached from a glottopolitical perspective focusing on normativity and institutionalization as agents for the production and management of the linguistic norm.

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