Magdalena Romera
University Lecturer in the Spanish Language area
This paper presents an advance in the study of the behaviour of speakers of language varieties in contact and its impact on the vitality of these varieties.
From a mathematical point of view, the researchers attempt to model the behaviour of speakers of language varieties in contact, including factors such as linguistic prestige, preference for one or another variety, or the degree of contact between speakers, in order to see how this affects the evolution and survival of languages.
This research effort is worthwhile since these models can be particularly useful in predicting how languages will evolve in contact situations in different societies. In this work, the effects of speakers' linguistic ideology are specifically tested. This concept, widely discussed in the sociology of language and sociolinguistics, refers to the beliefs, assumptions and feelings towards a given language variety and its speakers.
The modelling results indicate that language attitudes may lead to the less prestigious variety being maintained in situations of contact between languages with different degrees of prestige. This corroborates the results of some of the studies in the field, which, based on data from real speakers, show that language attitudes can act as a subjective variable that can act as a strong counterbalance to prestige relations. In addition, the study also includes data on the degree of contact between individuals with different ideologies, which is also consistent with the results of studies in real populations.
This is an approach to a subjective variable such as linguistic ideology, which opens the way to include other variables in this type of model, such as the context in which the interaction takes place, which we also know also conditions the preference for one or another linguistic variety.