Spanish Dialects and the Foreign Language Textbook: A Sound Perspective

Abstract

One philosophy held by many language teachers and authors of curriculum-oriented textbooks is that second language (L2) students should learn to speak an idealized form of the target language (TL) with native-like fluency, regardless of how native speakers actually communicate, and as if native speakers only spoke a textbook version of their language. A working definition of 'language' is a conglomeration of a series of (un)intelligible dialects, separated by elements of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic differentiation and variation (cf. Montes Giraldo 1982:9, 27). The purpose of this article is to demonstrate (1) that textbooks used in the L2 Spanish classroom on both the high school and college level do not meet the criteria for the definition of language, that is, that they generally misrepresent the fundamental concept of dialects, and (2) that the textbooks ignore certain important elements of dialects that would be beneficial to the L2 classroom from the perspective of the L2 student as listener. The focus of this article does not encompass all possible elements that distinguish one dialect from another but rather centers on phonologicallphonetic distinctions found in Spanish. The implicit claim that dialects have a place in the L2 classroom is supported independently by Wigdorsky, who states that the foreign language teacher's job is difficult, as the