Sociolinguistic aspects of Murcian Spanish

Abstract

In the same way that Murcia has historically been a transition area where many different cultures and civilizations have met (Iberians, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Muslims, Jews, Castilians, Aragonese, Catalans, and Genovese), the Spanish spoken in Murcia is a transition dialect, sharing features with Valencian Catalan, Castilian, Aragonese, and Andalusian Spanish. Its linguistic characterization has, therefore, traditionally been notably nonstandard, like the rest of southern varieties of peninsular Spanish. The aim of this article is to give an account of the current sociolinguistic situation of the Spanish spoken in Murcia, in southeastern Spain, focusing on its covert prestige characterization and its consequences in terms of dialect obsolescence in favor of the adoption of Standard Castilian Spanish, the structure of diffusion of this standard, and dialect choice in public contexts.