Spanish as a Lingua Franca

Abstract

Examining Spanish as a lingua franca (LF) means exploring it within the terrain of its genetic, structural, and historic complexity. Concretely, it means relating processes and outcomes of linguistic change to specific situations of language contact and bilingualism, as well as to the role of Spanish as common vehicle of communication in economic and political contexts. This chapter focuses on recent research in Spanish as a LF, language variation, and contact linguistics. First, it considers situations where multilingual communication problems can appear: for those living in Afro-American settlements; those living in colonized and ethnically diverse territories; those living in border areas or bilingual enclaves; and those involved in transnational migration. Acquisition of Spanish by indigenous people in the context of bilingual intercultural education is also addressed here. Second, it accounts for the linguistic analysis of different forms of Spanish as a LF: spoken as a mother tongue, as a second language, or as hybridized forms. Third, the chapter considers some of the issues related to a theoretical framework for linguistic communication processes involving language contact based on a range of cases, mainly in the Americas. Other issues such as migration, urbanization, and the media are also discussed. This body of research demonstrates that approaching Spanish as a LF leads to a better understanding of the extent to which different historical and contemporary communicative circumstances produce different linguistic results with respect to development of a common medium of communication.

Lingua francas and learning mobility: reflections on students’ attitudes and beliefs towards language learning and use

“…Pavlenko () discusses for example the phenomenon of Russian as an LF in the specific context of multiple language contact in the former Soviet Union area; similarly, Li () highlights the political relationship between Cantonese and Mandarin, as two major LFs in Greater China. In a different but still macro perspective, Wright () focuses on the efforts made by the French authorities to maintain the international status of French through fostering its use as an LF, and Godenzzi () reports on the reciprocal influences of the different varieties of Spanish due to their use as LFs. Although these studies shed light on the uses of languages other than English as LFs, there are no published studies, to the best of our knowledge, on the beliefs and attitudes of individual users of these LFs.…”

Spanish as the Second National Language of the United States

“…Puerto Rico has a population that is 98% Spanish speaking. The United States is in the northern crown of a continent that has over 300 million speakers of Spanish (Godenzzi, 2006). This does not mean there are no counterforces promoting language shift or attempting to discourage or prohibit the use of the language (García, 2011; Mar-Molinero & Paffey, 2011).…”

Sociopolitical and institutional conditions for teaching Spanish as a L2 in US universities

“…Based on data gathered from observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers of different professional status, the authors emphasize that Spanish departments often show ideologies similar to those of English-speakers described in previous sections of this article, despite the "anti-hegemonic" practices that could be expected in an academic space where a language other than English is taught and promoted. These ideological positions suggest, for example, an obligatory link between language and nation and favorable attitudes toward the figure of the monolingual Spanish speaker in Spanish-speaking countries -in both cases, in conflict with the numerous bilingual and multilingual situations in these places (see e.g., Godenzzi 2006, Niño-Murcia et al 2008) -, as well as a marked adherence to the linguistic standards established by the Royal Spanish Academy as well as the most recent "Pan-Hispanic" consortium of language academies.…”