El español en el estrecho de Gibraltar y el Magreb

Overview & Synopsis

This book presents the Spanish spoken in the Strait of Gibraltar and the Maghreb, thanks to field work that has exhaustively collected spontaneous oral samples from speakers from Ceuta, Melilla, western Algeria, the former protectorate in Morocco, Western Sahara, the Bay of Algeciras and the Rock of Gibraltar. The results offer the current validity of Spanish in these territories, as well as its linguistic characterization and the "code-switching" dynamics that are established in contact with English, Arabic and Berber.Likewise, the data allow establishing the importance of certain sociolinguistic factors and the relevance of the language with which Spanish coexists in the different places surveyed. The changes induced by contact are intertwined with other common phenomena throughout the Spanish-speaking world, but it is prestige and the idea of ​​social elevation that are the variables that shape the linguistic solutions of bilinguals, as well as the maintenance or death of the Spanish language.