SOUTHWEST · The politeness system and the emergence of a Sprachbund

The politeness system and the emergence of a Sprachbund

The project to be carried out aims to fill the gap existing around the 18th and 19th-century Ibero-Romance, specifically of the southwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish and Portuguese spoken in this area have developed a Sprachbund that reflects in the pronouns of address system. The great complexity that currently exists is said to have commenced in the 1700’s and the syntactic particularities it exhibits swing between the reality of the rest of the Iberian Peninsula and that of the American varieties. However, it is still unknown whether the situation of the Sprachbund is influenced by the American dialects or vice versa. Moreover, the literature has disregarded the likely influence of other Ibero-Romance languages in the latest development of Portuguese and Spanish. The three different dialects based on pronouns of address that are attested nowadays can be split as follows: the southwestern Sprachbund, the rest of the Iberian Peninsula and the American varieties. The Spanish Succession War that overthrew the Habsburgs and gave the power to the Bourbons marks the beginning of France as the country of prestige within the Iberian Peninsula and the gradual willing for independence of the American colonies until their emancipation. As a result, the 18th and 19th centuries are crucial for the understanding of all the paths that these three areas followed. But it is even more important to study the evolution of the Sprachbund for several reasons: firstly, the whole area was during centuries the zone of exchange between America and the Iberian Peninsula; secondly, it represented the prestige until the arrival of the Bourbons; thirdly, it possesses a system that resembles that of America, but at the same time it resorts to features of the rest of Spain and Portugal. Thus, this project attempts to analyse data that can account for the changes in the pronominal system of the Sprachbund during these two centuries, in order to determine the geographical dynamics that made three different areas; the sociolinguistic patterns that favoured these divergences; the pragmatic variables that played a role in this split and, finally, the social, political and cultural factors that prompted the linguistic independence of America and Europe to this respect, as well as the formation of a Sprachbund that still possesses American features though it is ruled by European standards. The importance of this project lies in the fact that pragmatics and politeness reflect society's beliefs. There is a gap that needs to be filled in order to understand the evolution of the Luso-Hispanic society and how the political events have also shaped these changes. The system of forms of address is the best example of what a country considers acceptable for its citizen to be treated and the literature has focused either on the Middle and Modern Ages or the present being. However, the centuries under study represent a profound shift in all western countries, since hierarchy and distance start to being perceived as less democratic and less liberal than the use of solidary terms. As a result, the overall objectives are the following: 1) To shed light on the 18th and 19th century ES and PT, and fill the gap to this respect. Thanks to this, new knowledge on the evolution of the IP society can be reached and scholars of many disciplines can link the current state of affairs with the findings already known about IP prior to 1700’s. 2) To pinpoint whether the levelling is a result of the narrow relation between south-western IP and the colonies in America and what was the right direction in the adoption of this phenomenon: from America to IP or vice versa. 3) To find what prompted this levelling, to what social, political or historical reasons it responds and the way the linguistic pattern has evolved from the beginning until the situation already described in the literature for the middle 20th century. 4) To establish the relation between the ES phenomenon and the PT counterpart and why it was in southern Portugal and not in the north that this levelling took place. As a result, a secondment in the University of Lisbon is foreseen.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union