28 - Orthography and Language Contact

Summary

The goal of his chapter is twofold: firstly, to provide a general review of the literature on language contact and orthography, with a special focus on how situations of language contact can bring about alternation or conflict among various spelling traditions, and spearhead the emergence of new orthographic standards; and secondly, to explore how a historical sociolinguistic approach can contribute to the study of historical orthographies in language contact situations. Specifically, the chapter tests the possibilities of an ecological framework to the study of historical orthographies in contact settings, by considering spelling norms as a reflection of multiple, simultaneous linguistic and cultural environmental forces. This framework is illustrated in the second half of the chapter by means of a case study of the emergence of orthographic norms in a high-contact environment, namely the development of spelling protocols in colonial Nahuatl and the application of these protocols to Spanish loanwords containing sibilants. This case study exemplifies the interface between linguistic, social and cultural effects typical of language contact environments, and illustrates the affordances of an ecological approach to the study of historical orthographies and orthographic normativization in other contact settings.