Indexicalidad, gentrificación lingüística y desigualdad social en el proceso de estandarización del gallego

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between indexicality, standardization policy and socioeconomic inequalities in the Galician linguistic field (as a minor language of Spain). I will examine the discursive role of Galician elites in the building of indexical orders from the Renaissance movement (19th century) onwards, and its links to the current negative representations of rural Galician. Also, I will explore the relationship between anti-rural prejudices, ideologies of class and standard ideologies, showing how common speakers share the stigmatizing indexical values of the elites, and rural speakers consent to the symbolic violence of which they are victims. Finally, I adapt the concept of gentrification from contemporary urbanism to the linguistic field in order to explain the impact of elitist academic lingualizing discourse on traditional speakers of Galician and also on the value of their varieties in the linguistic market. I support my analysis on the metalinguistic discourse of members of the intellectual elites authorized in the Galician linguistic and cultural field from Renaissance to contemporaneity, attitudinal matched-guise research, and ethnographic studies of the second millennium.