Exposure to contact and the geographical adoption of standard features: Two complementary approaches

Abstract

The region of Murcia has historically been a transition area of southeastern Spain where many different cultures and civilizations have met, and the Spanish spoken in Murcia is a transitional variety sharing features with Valencian Catalan, Castilian, Aragonese, and Andalusian Spanish. Murcia is traditionally characterized as an eminently nonstandard-speaking region. The aim of this study is to analyze the possible relationship between the geolinguistic patterns of diffusion of standard Castilian Spanish over the Murcian territory and the increasing use of standard forms in this traditionally nonstandard area. For this purpose, the adoption of Castilian Spanish features by Murcian speakers is correlated with interaction and exposure to innovations. The real presence or absence of some degree of standardization as well as its intraregional variation indicates whether the detected geographical patterns of linguistic uniformity apply to Murcia.