Which Pluricentrism? Tensions and Conflicts on the Construction of the Spanish and Portuguese International Linguistic Space

Abstract

Pluricentrism presupposes the existence of several territories under the influence of different linguistic usage norms. From a glottopolitical perspective, focused on the conflicts and tensions involved in the control and understanding of the language as a social object, the normative dynamics of Spanish and Portuguese are compared, paying attention to the differences in the colonizing processes undertaken by Spain and Portugal and the ways in which the international spaces of both languages were constituted. According to its specific characteristics, the international space of Spanish has been defined in this work as a “mixed pluricentrism” and that of Portuguese as an “unequal bicentrism.” The differences in the constitution of linguistic markets in both languages allow us to understand their conflicting social representations, such as “united” or “divided” languages, as well as political and ideological initiatives to build a notion of an international language. The political tensions over the establishment of the standard norm also depend on the differences in the participation of normative agents, linked to academies of the language in the case of Spanish, but not in the case of Portuguese, and to the establishment of diverse negotiating forums.

El pluricentrismo presupone la existencia de varios territorios bajo la influencia de diferentes normas de uso lingüístico. Desde una perspectiva glotopolítica, centrada en los conflictos y tensiones que implica el control y comprensión de la lengua como objeto social, se comparan las dinámicas normativas del español y el portugués, prestando atención a las diferencias en los procesos colonizadores emprendidos por España y Portugal y a las formas en que se constituyeron los espacios internacionales de ambos idiomas. Por sus características específicas, el espacio internacional del español se ha definido en esta obra como un “pluricentrismo mixto” y el del portugués como un “bicentrismo desigual.” Las diferencias en la constitución de los mercados lingüísticos en ambos idiomas permiten comprender sus representaciones sociales conflictivas, como lenguas “unidas” o “divididas,” así como iniciativas políticas e ideológicas para construir una noción de lengua internacional. Las tensiones políticas frente al establecimiento de la lengua estándar dependen también de las diferencias en la participación de los agentes normativos, vinculados a las academias de la lengua en el caso del español, pero no en el caso del portugués, y al establecimiento de diversos foros de negociación.

Keywords:

• Normative pluricentrism
• glottopolitics
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• normative conflict

Palabras clave:

• pluricentrismo normativo
• glotopolítica
• español
• portugués
• conflicto normativo

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Beyond direct interventions on language, many diverse social changes might alter linguistic relations, such as the implementation of a jury trial, which calls for a different type of language during the hearings.

2 While in Hispanic America books have been printed since the sixteenth century, with the existence of printing offices being commonplace in all cities throughout the eighteenth century, the prohibition of printing books in Brazil was maintained until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Not only that, but there have also been universities in Hispanic America since the sixteenth century, while the first Brazilian university, in São Paulo, was founded in 1911.

3 In fact, “voseo” is a linguistic phenomenon that can affect the second-person pronoun or the second-person verb, or both simultaneously, and is found distributed in a diversified way throughout the American continent. The social acceptance of such linguistic variants is also unequal in different geolectal areas.

4 Yeismo is the realization of the /ʎ/ as a fricative sound: [ʝ̞]. The “yeismo rehilado” consists in pronouncing the lateral consonant as an alveopalatal fricative, voiced [ʒ], or (more common today in Rio de la Plata) devoiced [ʃ].

5 PALOPS: Portuguese-speaking African countries: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe. Equatorial Guinea has also recently adopted Portuguese as an official language, despite having no significant Portuguese-speaking community, in order to be able to belong to the CPLP (Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries).

6 For example, Marcos Bagno in the introduction of his Gramática Pedagógica do Português Brasileiro advocates “in favor of the recognition of the Brazilian Portuguese as a full, autonomous language, which should be guided by its own principles of functioning and not by a grammatical tradition focused exclusively on the ancient European literary Portuguese” (Bagno 2011, 14).