The Spanish tilde as a visual semiotic marker of Pan-Hispanism

ABSTRACT

Diacritical marks are strongly present and frequently used in many spellings of the world’s languages. Their main functions are phonological and prosodic, and can eventually become identity and semiotic markers as well. This study examines the tilde of Spanish grapheme <ñ> in current commodified language use to convey the Pan-Hispanic ideology. The diachronic and diatopic development of Pan-Hispanism in Spanish-speaking communities is analyzed, examining from a semiotic perspective the presence of the tilde in four logomarks of relevant Pan-Hispanic institutions and events. Findings of interviews with the creators of the brand logo and an in-depth study of the sociocultural, political and economic aspects of the organizations represented, indicate that social practices related to Pan-Hispanism could be associated and emblematized by the tilde in visual branding.

KEYWORDS:

• Brand logo
• language commodification
• Global Spanish
• graphic ideologies
• US Hispanics
• diacritics

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank James Schwarten for the linguistic support and to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Any remaining errors and oversights are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest

None

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Corrections (https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2022.2055862 and https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2023.2287875).

Notes

1 With the exception of the History en español channel logo reported in Figure 1, all the logos in this article are reproduced with kind permission of the copyright holders. In the preceding case, due diligence was applied in contacting copyright holders prior to publication.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefano Presutti

Stefano Presutti is an adjunct professor in Italian Language and Culture at the University of California, Rome Study Center. His research interests mainly focus on language ideologies, grapholinguistics and semiotic landscape.