Study title

The LIAS-project (Linguistic Identity and Attitudes in Spanish-speaking Latin America) aims to study attitudes towards 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 interests. Norwegians are aware of the imporance of linguistic identity, and national debate often leads to new policies for language use. This has not been the case with Latin-American Spanish. An Euro-centered norm has been followed and legitimated in the governmental apparatus, especially in education, but there are signs of change. This comparative project will study how Latin Americans identify with their linguistic variant, their loyalty to it, and the social prejudice, acceptability or stigma associated with it. This research-based knowledge is essencial for policy makers, business, industry, NGOs, translators, teachers, scholars and students in any communication exchange with Latin America. The LIAS-project is the first study of attitudes towards Latin-American Spanish following the same methodology and including all the Spanish-speaking region, Madrid and Miami. The results of a pre-project (NFR-190213/S50) assure the feasibility of this large scale project and the committment and professional knowledge of highly qualified researchers to carry out the large data-gathering work and subsequent analysis. The pre-project has found a great interest for linguistic attitudes judged by the amount of local studies carried out with different methodologies and small samples. The LIAS-project aims to work with a global perspective and common methodology. Its findings will be presented locally and internationally, in scholarly articles,in a book and on a website. 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. Data are freely available for downloading.