Yebra López, Carlos;
(2022)
Decolonizing Spanish: Ladino and Chavacano as Sites of Global Hispanophonia.
TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World
, 9
(8)
pp. 69-92.
10.5070/t49857562.
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Abstract
The current institutional attempts by the Cervantes Institute of Manila and the Spanish Royal Academy of Tel Aviv to revitalize Chavacano and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), respectively, by assimilating them into Spanish pose a fundamental paradox: how can the official institutions of the Spanish language document, map, and characterize the subalternized speaking communities of the “Global Hispanophone” (Calderwood) while resisting the temptation to impose a neocolonial agenda on their cultural sovereignty? (DeGraff; Deumert et al.) Drawing upon an understanding of languages as cultural and political artifacts, in this essay I will first discuss the “modern” colonial invention of Spanish as a North Atlantic universal (Trouillot 2002) and the subsequent development of the pan-Hispanic and Hispanophone linguistic ideologies in postcolonial times (Del Valle). My historiographical critique of “Global Spanish” from the peripheral perspectives of Ladino and Chavacano will expose both the discursive enthronization of Castilian into “(Global) Spanish” and the century-long pejoration of Ladino and Chavacano as processes motivated by ideological factors, rather than structural (morpho-syntactic) aspects. I will conclude that a genuinely decolonizing dynamic cannot accept any form of linguistic re-Hispanicization premised on the supposed unsuitability of Ladino and Chavacano for contemporary purposes. Rather, it can only materialize through the implementation of linguistic self-determination and self-organization, both of which are predicated on the self-respect and dignity of their community of speakers.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Decolonizing Spanish: Ladino and Chavacano as Sites of Global Hispanophonia |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.5070/t49857562 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.5070/T49857562 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 by the author(s).This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | decolonial linguistics, Global Hispanophone, Spanish, Ladino, Chavacano |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10177308 |
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