“A miña variedade é defectuosa” – a legitimidade social das neofalas

Although Galician survived several centuries of languagecontact with Spanish, a combination of sociopoliticaland socioeconomic factors in the latter half ofthe twentieth century has accelerated the process oflanguage shift. Language policy interventions since the1980s have, however, attempted to curb this trend in aneffort to maintain the language in areas where it continuesto be spoken and to revive it elsewhere. Whilethere has been a decline in the number of traditionalnative speakers, there has been a revitalization of thelanguage amongst certain younger, urban, middleclassand traditionally Spanish-speaking sectors ofGalician society. These neofalantes, or "neo-speakers"of Galician, frequently find themselves negotiatingtheir right for linguistic space amongst native speakersof Spanish and Galician. In this paper we explore thislinguistic space through an analysis of contemporarydiscourses both about neo-speakers and by neo-speakersof Galician. These discourses were generated fromthree discussion groups consisting of native and neospeakersof Galician. In our analysis of the data, we lookat the role of the new speaker as a legitimate and legitimizedspeaker (Bourdieu 1982). The study concludesthat the sociolinguistic space occupied by new waysof speaking and new speakers requires greater socialrecognition.