Dialect variation as reflected in the Diccionario de la lengua española: ideological and pedagogical implications

ABSTRACT

Recent advances in sociolinguistics demonstrate the need to adopt a wider international perspective related to the way in which language variation should be reflected in the work of the institutions that participate more actively in the design of language ideologies in a 21st-century, globalized society. The most recent Pan-Hispanic publications by the Real Academia Española (RAE) and the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE) reflect a will to recognize and promote all Spanish varieties on equal footing. This article analyzes how language variation is becoming an integral part of the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) in its successive print and online editions. In addition, beginning with the results of a questionnaire administered to United States’ Spanish instructors, this article discusses how this new Pan-Hispanic approach, aimed at satisfying the needs of Spanish speakers on a global scale, is understood and applied by instructors who teach Spanish as a second or foreign language. In this case, particular attention is also paid to the issues related to the ways in which educators perceive lexicographical progress in recent academic works.

RESUMEN

Los recientes avances en sociolingüística han demostrado la necesidad de adoptar una perspectiva internacional sobre la forma en que la variación lingüística debe reflejarse en el trabajo de las instituciones que participan más activamente en el diseño de unas ideologías del lenguaje para la sociedad globalizada del siglo XXI. Para la lengua española, las más recientes publicaciones de la RAE y la ASALE reflejan la voluntad de reconocer y promocionar todas las variedades españolas en pie de igualdad. En este artículo se analiza la forma en que la variación lingüística se integra en el Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE), en sus sucesivas ediciones impresas y en línea. En relación con ello, partiendo de los resultados de un cuestionario administrado a profesores estadounidenses, se reflexiona sobre cómo el actual enfoque panhispánico, destinado a satisfacer las necesidades de los hispanohablantes a escala mundial, es entendido y aplicado por el profesorado de español como lengua segunda o extranjera. Se analizan con especial atención las cuestiones relacionadas con la percepción por parte de los educadores del progreso lexicográfico en las obras académicas recientes.

KEYWORDS:

• Language variation
• Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE)
• Pan-Hispanic norm
• Spanish language teaching (SLT)
• L2 Spanish
• language ideology

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Variación lingüística
• Diccionario de la Lengua Española (DLE)
• norma panhispánica
• enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera (ELE)
• español como segunda lengua
• ideología lingüística

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this issue for valuable improvement suggestions.

Notes

1 The data on geographic tags in the different editions of the academic dictionary come from the Institute of Lexicography of the Royal Spanish Academy. We are sincerely grateful to the experts at the Institute—and especially Guillermo Rojo—for providing us with access to such valuable information.

2 Teaching Spanish in the United States poses several challenges, as well as some unique opportunities. To begin with, Spanish is not the official language of the country, but it is also not a foreign language like any other, since, in reality, as everyone knows, it is the de facto second language of the United States. Additionally, a considerable number of Spanish speakers in the United States are so-called “heritage speakers,” descendants of first-generation Spanish speakers who immigrated to the country at different times, bringing with them their native variety, mixing it not just with the country’s English but, also, with the U.S. Spanish koine that resulted from this mixing of varieties (Dumitrescu 2013). Then again, there is probably a different perception of the contributions made by the RAE and ASALE in every Spanish-speaking country.

3 In terms of level of education, as Table 2 shows, a large majority of those surveyed held an MA or a Doctorate (with a marked predominance of women: 29 out of 40). This demonstrates the trend already documented in another study on the professional profile of Spanish instructors across the globe (Muñoz-Basols, Rodríguez-Lifante and Cruz-Moya 2017), which found that 60.8% of the 1,675 people surveyed (in 84 countries) possessed a master’s degree. In response to the question on the academic level or level at which they have taught, most respondents indicated having taught at more than one, with a predominance having taught at the secondary level (as can be seen in Table 3). In terms of their mother tongue, 43 indicated English (of these, five identified as having a Hispanic background but speaking English as their primary language, or as bilingual), three mentioned Italian, two mentioned Romanian, and one mentioned German. The 51 native Spanish speakers in the sample seem to highlight Moreno-Fernández’s insight that there is apparently no other country where instructors are from a broader array of geolectal backgrounds. In our sample, there were 11 instructors from Spain, 10 from Argentina, eight from Mexico, five from Colombia, four from Cuba, three from Panamá, three from Puerto Rico, two from Venezuela, one from Ecuador, one from the Dominican Republic, one from El Salvador, one from Honduras, one from Chile, and one from Peru.

4 This coincides with the perception among English speakers observed in the survey in Moreno-Fernández 2018, though those respondents were not Spanish instructors but, rather, represented a general popular opinion.

5 Andión Herrero (2013) found similar results for the nonnative instructors surveyed: “[l]os profesores, sobre todo los no nativos—también los nativos que viven y trabajan fuera de su zona dialectal de origen—mezclan rasgos lingüísticos no coexistentes en un hispanohablante real; por ejemplo, distinguen la interdental [⊖] de la alveolar [s] y a la vez rehilan y/ll… ” (157).

6 The model of the online dictionary for Spanish-language learners, such as LE/L2, presented in Nomdedeu-Rull and Tarp (2018), contains several of the lexicographical characteristics recommended by the RAE and the ASALE for their future online edition, which is already under way.