Essential Concepts in Language Studies

Polyglot

The effective capacity of speakers to use different languages.

Minority Language

A language that experiences restrictions in its domains and functions, which are not fully established. A language can become a 'territory' after a process of bilingualization within a previously monolingual minority community (e.g., Spanish in Puerto Rico in relation to English).

Dominant Language

A language holding a hegemonic position, often in a state of linguistic conflict with a dominated language. It may possess unique domains and frequently shares others with areas where the dominated language is prevalent.

Dominated Language

A language that holds a disadvantaged position within a linguistic conflict situation alongside a dominant language. It typically lacks exclusive domains and shares its areas with the dominant language.

Diglossia

A linguistic situation where two varieties of the same language, or two different languages in contact, are used by speakers with distinct functional distributions.

Language as its Own Territory

A concept suggesting that a language can be considered its own territory when it has established a format akin to a national territory.

Official Language

A language legally established as the primary instrument for communication and interaction between the state and its citizens.

Principle of Personality

Alongside the Principle of Territoriality, this is one of the models of language policy applied when granting official language status. This principle ensures that individuals receive certain language services based on their own linguistic preference. Its application assumes that the majority of a state's citizens possess multilingual proficiency in the languages in contact.

Principle of Territoriality

A principle that restricts the right of individuals to receive public services in their first language to specific areas within a state's territory.

Linguistic Interference

A phenomenon occurring when elements from one language system (often a dominant one) influence another language, introducing shifts in phonic elements, lexical items, or morphosyntactic structures into the recipient language (e.g., the use of foreign interjections like "bueno").

Linguistic Bias or Prejudice

A deviation from rational opinion, often valuing one's first language excessively or forming opinions about other languages based on ignorance, malevolence, or nervous adherence to Manichaean stereotypes, leading to perceived differences. There are two main types:

• Interlinguistic Prejudice

  Prejudices concerning different languages, often involving stereotypes about their difficulty, harshness, cultural value, utility, or literary merit (e.g., "Some languages are difficult, others easy; some are harsh, others soft. Major languages are more widely spoken. There are languages of primitive culture, useless languages, useful languages, and those with superior or inferior literature.").

• Intralinguistic Prejudice

  Prejudices within a single language, such as the denigration of non-standard forms, the promotion of the standard, hierarchical relationships between a primary language and its dialects, or contempt for the standard itself (e.g., Blaverism and Gonellism).