"My variety is flawed": The social legitimacy of neofalas
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Abstract
Although Galician survived several centuries of language contact with Spanish, a combination of sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors in the latter half of the twentieth century has accelerated the process of language shift. Language policy interventions since the 1980s have, however, attempted to curb this trend in an effort to maintain the language in areas where it continues to be spoken and to revive it elsewhere. While there has been a decline in the number of traditional native speakers, there has been a revitalization of the language amongst certain younger, urban, middleclass and traditionally Spanish-speaking sectors of Galician society. These neofalantes, or "neo-speakers" of Galician, frequently find themselves negotiating their right for linguistic space amongst native speakers of Spanish and Galician. In this paper we explore this linguistic space through an analysis of contemporary
discourses both about neo-speakers and by neo-speakers of Galician. These discourses were generated from three discussion groups consisting of native and neospeakers of Galician. In our analysis of the data, we look at the role of the new speaker as a legitimate and legitimized speaker (Bourdieu 1982). The study concludes that the sociolinguistic space occupied by new ways of speaking and new speakers requires greater social recognition.
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