Course Description: SPAN 308, Bilingual Communities, examines the social and linguistic dynamics of the various communities in which Spanish is in contact with other languages. The Spanish language, a communication system resulting from language contact over many centuries, is a means of expression for multilingual people in the United States, Latin America, Spain, Africa, and Asia. This class aims to illuminate various topics related to this reality while at the same time expanding students' language repertoire and skills in Spanish and promoting and developing their critical language awareness skills. This class is open to all students of the Spanish language. At the same time, it is part of the Romance Languages initiative for the development and learning of Spanish for heritage learners.
As in all SHL (Spanish Heritage Language Program) courses, we will use, as a starting point, the belief that languages are a social phenomenon and therefore include, by necessity and nature, variety as a result of the constant movement and change of its people – universally human aspects. Thus, we must approach the study of languages in a way that overcomes linguistic hierarchies and assumptions based on the paradigm of a "standard" language. This paradigm works on the assumption that there is a "correct" way to speak a language and that there are "native" speakers who speak this "standard," ignoring the realities of language variety based on identity and social context.
The most appropriate position to study Spanish/Castilian in an ethical and honest way is not to consider the language as a simple linguistic object independent of its speakers and sociopolitical realities, but as a living and constantly evolving instrument of many nations and cultures which is closely linked to the identities of its speakers.
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