New minority language speakers: an approach from a Basque perspective

The recent academic framework of “New Speakers” has questioned assumptions about what it means to be a speaker of a minority language. However, few studies delve into why these speakers adopt certain language aspects and not others, and how some of these adoptions are linked to contact with Spanish and emerging new identities as a result of revitalization efforts. In this talk, Itxaso Rodríguez Ordóñez will discuss how Basque speakers negotiate three linguistic identities: euskaldunberri “new speaker,” euskaldun “Basque speaker,” and euskaldunzahar “native speaker.”

Subsequently, she will demonstrate that attitudes towards the use of Basque and some of its structures depend on the type of speaker. She will conclude with some suggestions for appreciating those uses of Basque that are still undervalued.

Itxaso Rodríguez Ordóñez received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. Her research focuses the mechanisms that emerge in contact situations that lead to typologically common and uncommon linguistic patterns. Most of her work pertains to the Basque-Spanish contact situation in Spain. More recently, she has also focused on contact effects in the Linguistic Landscapes of Spanish and English in Chicago.

Online Event

In English (simultaneous interpretation into Spanish)

More information: cultman@cervantes.es