Social Functions of Language and Linguistic Conflict in Galicia
Social Functions of Language
Function of Identity
This is the cornerstone of personal and collective identity configuration.
Family Function
The role that language plays within a family becomes one of the key factors in the maintenance or abandonment of the language.
Labor Function
A language exercises this function when it is used for linguistic relations between individuals in the specific context of work.
Local Function
A local function is closely linked to factors such as habitat.
Institutional Function
This is the language that is the normal vehicle of communication between the individual and the different estates.
Cultural Function
This manifests itself in very different levels.
International Function
This is when a language is used not only by its originating speakers, but also by persons belonging to other language groups.
Home Language
The initial language or mother tongue is the one in which we learn to speak and that is acquired spontaneously, usually within the family. The process by which language is put into practice when parents decide not to transmit their language to their children, and its reversal, is complex. The parents prioritize the language that appears to facilitate social success to a greater extent. In Sao Paulo, as the years go by, the changes are very negative for Galician, while the proportion of initial Spanish speakers increases considerably, and we see the clear progress of the replacement of Galician with Spanish.
The loss of influence of Galician-speaking parents in families is alarming, as many individuals were educated by their parents in Galician with Spanish as their initial language. When analyzing the geographic distribution of the initial population, it is discovered that the majority were born in the countryside. In the villages, there is a sharp decrease of the Galician language as the initial language, and in cities, many people are monolingual in Spanish.
Definitely, the Spanish government is introducing itself more and more into areas traditionally reserved for Galician.
The Linguistic Conflict
The existence of more than one idiomatic community creates an imbalance. This inequality will give rise to language conflict, which can follow two paths: a standardization process or linguistic replacement. Linguistic conflict appears in a society with two languages when they want to perform the same functions. This friction often occurs when one language tries to usurp functions traditionally associated with the language native to that territory. This is what is happening between Galician and Spanish.
In our situation, the prolongation of bilingualism, understood as the active power in more than one language, is a fallacy. The tendency of society is monolingualism in favor of one language. In most cases, the benefit is for the dominant language, which, through a process of linguistic assimilation based on a situation of diglossia (unbalanced use of two languages that exist in the same territory in benefit of the dominant language) and by self-hatred of the minority language speakers. This self-hatred comes from a variety of prejudices: the Galician language is poor, the village does nothing for science and technology, it is bad manners to speak Galician with someone who is talking to you in Spanish…
Interference and Variations of the Standard
Hipergaleguismo
This is a false Galicianization of forms that differ in both languages (e.g., segredario, urban, inconvinte, weeks, spring).
Vulgarisms
Final
- By the addition of a dental: Arrábida, amote
- Epenthesis: soybean, Paragoge
- Soul: love, corazonhe
Average
- By suppression: afer: tar, Nimiga
- Syncope: VRAM, espranza
Starting Position
- Apocope: true, virtue
*Apart from these:
- Metathesis: change the order of the letters
- Simplification of consonant groups
- Vocalic hesitations in
- Syllable rhotacism
Archaic
These are the least frequent type of deviation. They were exclusive to the written language and more formal uses.
Lusismo
These appear in the use of Portuguese terms to replace Galician forms (e.g., governments, people, yours, fight, nerve and a half).
Castilianisms
Phonic
- Loss of the distinction between open and half-open/half-closed vowels
- Pronunciation of the nasal velar
- Pronunciation of the voiceless palatal fricative as an alveolar
Spelling
- Writing that reproduces Castilian
- Accents (e.g., air, parasite)
Morpho-syntactic
- Change in the grammatical gender of nouns, equating them to Spanish
- Change in the forms of verb conjugation
- Use of the preposition before the infinitive and direct object
- Errors in unstressed pronoun placement
- Use of plural forms of masculine nouns in the statement
- Confusion of pronominal forms of direct and indirect object
- Use of composite lexical verb forms
Vocabulary Interference from Castilian
We can distinguish various grades:
- When there are two synonymous terms in Galician, there is a tendency to use the one that coincides with the Castilian.
- At other times, although the Galician term is still valid, its significance is limited.
- This takes place when a Castilian word totally replaces the Galician one.
Semantic
: they are produced when a form you Castile correspondn 2 ends Galician and these serve nn bn.