Introduction. Language and Territory - Part II

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

WORD (WORCESTER)

Taylor & Francis Group

Lugar: Abingdon; 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.In the current stage of globalization, the links between languages and territories are being contested and remapped, due to various factors such as the weakening of the functions of States, the processes of regional integration, the increase in population mobility, the development of information and communication technologies, and the growingly widespread access to mobile devices and Internet connectivity. At the linguistic level, there has been a multiplication of linguistic contacts, the recognition of other languages in the States, the consolidation of large language areas, the increase in interest in learning foreign languages, and debates about the presenceand uses of different languages on the Internet, among other issues.The papers gathered in this second issue dedicated to ?Language and Territory? explore different problems around languages that characterize each of these different stages: from the formation and consolidation of national States to the current processes of globalization. These works lend themselves to a cross-sectional reading from a glottopolitical perspective.