Latin American Spanish

This course offers a survey of Latin American Spanish dialects. The course aims at stating the major historical and sociolinguistic questions posed by Latin American dialectology and the Hispanic sociolinguistics, and to stimulate further inquiry. Dialect variation of Spanish language is the key element that defines Latin America; as such, a close examination of its sociolinguistic history will be of interest to any humanist with a focus on South America, Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and even the United States. (1 unit)

Required text: John Lipski, El español de América (Cátedra, 1996).

Reference book available at the college library: Manuel Díaz Campos (ed)., Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics (Wiley/Blackwell, 2011).