Linguistic Polyphony and Valencian Dialectology

Speech and Discursive Polyphony

Speech involves creating a fictional reality, often recreated from linguistic facts. In discursive reality, the sender utilizes a range of varied voices to convey a message, a concept known as polyphony. This polyphony is manifested through various procedures for introducing speaker voices:

• Direct Speech: Another text reproduced verbatim, typically indicated by quotation marks or hyphens.
• Indirect Speech: Reproducing the meaning while maintaining the form, often introduced by changing the verb (e.g., using verbs of saying).
• Indirect Free Speech: Maintaining the dependent manner of the message without explicit verbs of diction.
• Interior Monologue: Reproducing the speaker's thoughts, often characterized by syntactic irregularities.

Communication Needs and Social Adequacy

Given the enormous variability in speech acts, it is necessary to classify speaking situations into standardized text types. There are three main aspects of functional variation in texts: communicative domains, genres, and textual records.

Communicative Domains and Genres

Domains are sets of situations or places where a language is used within a community of speakers, such as family, professional, academic, scientific, technical, journalistic, advertising, literary, or legal-administrative contexts. Within each domain, specific genres share common textual features, such as letters, editorials, phone conversations, or interviews.

Linguistic Registers and Functional Varieties

Registers are functional language varieties defined by several factors:

• Topic: Ranging from general to specialized.
• Formality: Based on the relationship between the sender and receiver and social considerations.
• Channel: Oral, written, prepared, or spontaneous.
• Purpose: Based on the intended effect on the receiver.

Characterization of the Valencian Language

Geographical varieties of a language are known as dialects. These are collective and systematic achievements within a linguistic territory. Any language is the sum of all its dialects. Different dialects belong to the same language when they share similarities in phonetics, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, despite existing differences.

Dialectal Similarities and Isoglosses

Isoglosses are imaginary lines on a map indicating the geographical reach of a linguistic phenomenon. They help define the boundaries and shared traits between different speech communities.

Origins and Dialectal Blocks

The Catalan language emerged as independent from other Romance languages between the 6th and 10th centuries. Specific morphological and phonetic characteristics allow for the distinction of two major dialect blocks:

• Western (Occidental)
• Eastern (Oriental)

Features of these constituent dialects were later transplanted to territories annexed to the Crown of Aragon through repopulation, leading to the development of consecutive dialects.