Linguistic Identity and Attitudes in Spanish-speaking Latin America

The main purpose of this application is to prepare a grant proposal for the Latin America Program Nov. 26 call. The second is to present the objectives of the future project: ?Linguistic Identity and Attitudes in Spanish-speaking Latin America? (LIAS), wh ich aims to study attitudes towards the Latin-American Spanish and how they form the linguistic identity of its speakers. Linguistic attitudes result from a complex interplay of social forces and express how language serves individual and collective inter ests. Norwegians are aware of the imporance of linguistic identity, and national debate often leads to new policies for language use. This is not the case with Latin-American Spanish, which for centuries has followed a Euro-centered norm legitimated by th e Latin-American states for use in the governmental apparatus, especially in education. The project will study how Latin Americans identify with their linguistic variant, their loyalty to it, and the social prejudice, acceptability or stigma associated wi th it. This research-based knowledge is essencial for policy makers, business and industry, NGOs, teachers, scholars and students in any communication exchange with Latin America. The ILAS-project is the first study of attitudes towards Latin-American Spa nish including all the Spanish-speaking region, Madrid and Brazil (where Spanish will be compulsory 2010). To achieve its objectives, the LIAS-project requires experience from high quality research, ability to carry out large data-gathering work, knowledg e of Latin-American research and access to large and skilled local academic networks. The qualifications of the participants in this project cover these needs and count with a skilled network of researchers in Latin America. The results of the ILAS-projec t will be presented in internationally, in scholarly articles and in a book. Master and PhD students in Norway, Latin America and elsewhere will be able to use the project data in their work for many years to come.