Introducción a la Sociolingüística Hispánica by Manuel Díaz-Campos (review)

Introducción a la Sociolíngüística Hispánica is a textbook on sociolinguistics that discusses linguistic variation in the Spanish language and how this variation is perceived by society. This innovative textbook, written in an easy-to-read Spanish, incorporates cultural components like popular music in order to explain linguistic processes, and covers the most important topics that the Spanish student, linguist, or researcher requires in order to understand Spanish as it is spoken in society, and as a cultural manifestation of ideological and sociological perceptions. Díaz-Campos highlights the different sociological aspects that shape language as well as their significance in society and in education, and reinforces the learning of these concepts through practice exercises at the end of each chapter. In short, this work on sociolinguistics facilitates the understanding of Spanish from a linguistic and a social perspective.

In Chapter 1, “Fundamental Aspects to Understand the Field of Sociolinguistics” Díaz-Campos focuses on how the way people speak reveals much of their identity. He explains the tasks a sociolinguist undertakes, which include collecting, codifying and analyzing linguistic data. These tasks are shown to facilitate the exemplification of how language is used, and the demonstration of how its use depends on factors such as socioeconomic status, age, gender, ethnicity and education. He also presents the tools used in such tasks and explains how sociolinguists select the focal speech communities they study. Díaz-Campos then discusses the concepts of language variation and linguistic change, examining their linguistic and extralinguistic causes.

Chapter 2, “Language, Age, Gender, and Socioeconomic Status”, discusses important social factors that generate language variation. Change and variation are correlated with certain age groups. An example discussed is the distinction in prestige between the phonemes /s/ and /θ/ when produced by young Spanish speakers from southern Spain. Díaz-Campos also notes that gender affects speech style, with men favouring a more vernacular style and women tending to be more conservative. He emphasizes that the new roles that men and women are adopting in modern society present challenges for sociolinguists studying language variation due to gender. The effects of socioeconomic status are illustrated through well-explained examples of how the socioeconomic position of the speaker may be related to language prestige and power.

Chapters 3 and 4, “The Study of Sociophonological Variation” and “Sociophonological Variation in the Spanish-Speaking world”, focus on accent variation from a linguistic and sociolinguistic perspective. Díaz-Campos describes some of the social and stylistic causes of pronunciation differences in Spanish and discusses how variation in pronunciation can reveal a speaker’s gender, age, socio-economic status, or ethnicity. He also demonstrates how many of the phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical properties of Spanish varieties can be shown through popular songs. In Chapter 4, a comprehensive description of variation in pronunciation in both Spain and Latin America is presented, stressing that these variations are linked to the speaker’s individual as well as social identity.

In Chapters 5 and 6, “Morphosyntactic Variation” and “Morphosyntactic Variation and Social Meaning in The Spanish-Speaking World”, Díaz-Campos explains some of the linguistic and extralinguistic motivations for speakers to use certain morphosyntactic variants and refers to some of the geographical, social and individual contexts in which these variants are manifest. Morphosyntactic variation is exemplified through a discussion of different grammatical constructions including the preference for the present perfect (Spain) or the preterite (Latin America) when referring to a completed past action, or the formal vs. informal status of tú and usted (clarifying some misconceptions that are sometimes transmitted in textbooks or in the foreign language class). In short, this section illustrates, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the factors that influence the use of varied morphosyntactic forms in the different varieties of Spanish.

Chapter 7, “Languages in Contact”, discusses contact situations where Spanish is the language of either the majority or the minority. The author examines the influence exerted...