Spanish in Contact

Spanish in Contact: Issues in Bilingualism
edited by Ana Roca and John B. Jensen

Contents | Introduction | Review Excerpt | Order form

Cascadilla Press (www.cascadilla.com) xi + 226 pages publication date: November 1996 ISBN 978-1-57473-008-1 paperback, $23.95 ISBN 978-1-57473-108-8 library binding, $53.95

This collection of papers addresses the wide variety of questions that arise when Spanish (or any language) comes into contact with other languages. Which languages are used and under what circumstances? How do languages change and affect each other in a bilingual or multilingual environment? How do societal pressures, cultural stereotypes, and individual attitudes affect language use and development, or even result in the death of a language?

Spanish in Contact is organized into three sections, examining contact situations in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. The authors look at regions where Spanish is the dominant language as well as regions where it is the minority language, and discuss changes in the lexicon, phonology and syntax of the affected languages. Code-switching and issues in language planning are also addressed.

You can read the introduction on-line. We have also posted an excerpt from a review which appeared in Language Problems and Language Planning 22(1).