Language and Territory: Part II

RIZZO, MARÍA FLORENCIA; KLEIFGEN, JO ANNE; MAGADÁN, CECILIA

WORD (WORCESTER)

Taylor and Francis Ltd.

Año: 2021 vol. 67 p. 1 - 17

0043-7956

Over time, the links between languages and territories have been shaped and interrogated in different ways. At the stage of formation and consolidation of national states, the common language was one of the essential components of national identity, so that it was inescapably linked to a territory. In South America, in particular, the two hegemonic languages that operated as an element of homogenization Spanish and Portuguese were the result of the colonization processes in the region by the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. These processes, as well as the forms in which the independence of the new nations and the migratory phenomena that took place later, had a strong influence on the configuration of the linguistic space and on the different links that the majority languages established both with the former European metropolis and with the native and immigrant languages spoken in the territory. These historical trajectories in which languages, social groups, and imagined territories are articulated, have an impact, even today, on the sociolinguistic configuration of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds in general, and of South America in particular.