Contactos y conflictos de lenguas: aproximación sociolingüística a las configuraciones de tipo diglósico con atención particular a los casos de Cataluña, de Galicia y del Paraguay

Abstract

In its first part, this paper offers a brief overview of the four main models existing in the sociolinguistic field concerning language contact in multilingual societies. My hypothesise that the significance of the different ideologies (imaginaires) of the languages in contact is decisive as to the dynamics of a diglossia-like configuration, this significance being brought out by the conflictivist model of language contact. This hypothesis is illustrated, in the second part of the paper, by three sociolinguistic configurations in which it is precisely the power of sociolinguistic representations and attitudes that accounts for the evolution of the situation, within the context of a process of sociolinguistic normalisation and normativization.