El portuñol en la frontera Venezuela-Brasil: contacto, actitudes e ideologías lingüísticas

Abstract

This paper depicts an approach to language contact study in the Venezuela-Brazil border region, particularly in Santa Elena de Uairén city (Venezuela), where certain bilingual practices occur which have not been analyzed until now in sociolinguistic studies. First of all, we account for the construction of the currently sociolinguistic reality in this border community, characterizing the most common purposes, situations and uses of language according to the frame of language contact. Subsequently, we discuss about the contact linguistics’ consequences in this city, particularly focusing in the border language variety named “Portuñol”, which we attempt to define under the notion of translanguaging. Likewise, some data are presented from a study undertaken in 2014 in this community, to illustrate the perceptions of speakers about the Portuñol phenomena and their attitudes towards the practices of this language variety, which we consider to be closely linked to monoglosic ideologies.