The lack of familiarity of sociolinguistics with social theory, leads to use indifferently, as if they were transparent and univocal, items that present problems since the beginning of their use as technical items. This is the case of the term identity. From the modern perspective, theories on identity, formulated by social sciences, can be ascribed to two main groups: essentialists and constructionists. The perspective of this paper belongs to the latter. Because of its relevance, Tajfel´s theory of social identity stands out. This theory has been recently developed by Hogg through the theory of self-categorization. This work deals with the relationship that languages can maintain with identities under the light of these theories. Languages and linguistic varieties are, on the one hand, the result of social identity acts, and, on the other hand, the source of social identities (among which ethnic and national identities are found, but not exclusively). Likewise, reflexive modernization theory is based on ”the fact that social practices are constantly examinated and improved under the light of the information that is extracted from those practices, that, in this sense, alter their characteristics” (Giddens). All this process affects identities and on their relations to languages and varieties.

Theories about the origin of the Spanish-lexified creoles of the Philippines known as Chabacano have been based on scarce historical samples. This article presents two early Chabacano texts that are more than twenty years older than the ones that have been available so far: ‘La Buyera’, from 1859, and ‘Juancho’, from 1860. Based on a comparison with historical and contemporary sources pertaining to Philippine-Spanish contact varieties, the texts are placed in their linguistic and sociohistorical context. A linguistic analysis of the texts reveals a clear pattern of creole features and suggests that there was probably sociolinguistically motivated variation in different settings where the Chabacano varieties emerged. The results of the analysis confirm that Chabacano existed as a crystallized variety by at least the mid-19th century and was not restricted to interactions between servants and Spanish-speaking masters or to commercial contexts. Rather, it was already a language used for social and intimate relations and daily interactions in diverse neighborhoods of Manila.

Summary Linguistic sttudies of Galician began in the last third of the 18th century with Father Martín Sarmiento (1695–1772). Since the tradition of writing in this language had been interrupted towards the end of the 15th century, its later recovery required certain decisions on what the model for ‘good Galician’ would be as well as on the norm for the writing system. In this article, I will explore the various destinies of the available options: (1) the adherence to actual speech; (2) the adherence to an archaic available norm; and (3) the approach to the Portuguese norm, which in its extreme formulation, assumes the adoption of this language as the high variant and the written form of Galician. A close examination of prefaces and introductions to grammars, dictionaries, and other relevant texts shows a clear preference for the first solution. ‘Good Galician’ would thus be the one spoken by the people, in all its diversity, with some exclusions which varied according to the author: In some cases, important towns and urban variants were excluded; in others, the mountainous regions and the areas bordering with Castile; and in certain cases, the ‘people’ only meant ‘the best’ in each town. Options 2 and 3 made a timid appearance towards the end of 19th century even though 3 gained acceptance throughout the 20th century, specially in the last twenty years.

Despite the relative abundance of written records from the late 19th century of interactions in Chinese pidgin Spanish (a modified form of Spanish used in business transactions between Chinese merchants in Manila and their customers), few of these texts have made it into the hands ―or research― of Creole experts. Up to now, Chinese pidgin Spanish has been largely dismissed by creolists as an unstable jargon unworthy of their attention. However, the presence and use of stereotypes among the local population, as evidenced by the substantial corpus of surviving documents from this period, demonstrates a certain degree of stability in at least some aspects of the pidgin. The recent discovery of a short dialogue in Chinese pidgin Spanish dating from the early 18th century has pushed the timeline for the language back much further. This article examines the main linguistic features of the dialogue and compares them with those from a century and a half later. The results indicate the prolonged stability of the stereotypes over a period of at least 150 years. The analysis also explores the possible origins of these linguistic forms and how they spread.

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