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This paper describes and analyses, from a sociolinguistic point of view, the frequency of the phenomenon of the depalatalization of the voiced palatal nasal phoneme in the Spanish spoken in Montevideo. For the purpose of this paper, a survey comprising 150 respondents has been conducted -taking into account age, sex and sociocultural level variables-. The results demonstrate the recent existence of the process of dephonologization in the Spanish spoken in this city. At the same time, the results are described according to the recorded variables and, furthermore, are based on the phonic context and the prosodic characteristics in which the process of elimination of the palatal character of the aforementioned phoneme is manifested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The image of the heart regularly appears in our daily lives: it decorates multiple everyday objects, such as clothing, logos, shop windows, and it appears on graffiti. Additionally, it is ubiquitous in the digital world, as the "like" button is often in the shape of a heart. The aim of this paper is to identify the reasons why the image of the heart is so widespread, and the functions performed by its representation. In order to do so, we carried out a linguistic and semiotic landscape study, by analysing a large corpus of images of hearts, collected in the urban landscape and on the Internet. The results show that the hearts found in the two corpora perform all language functions identified by Jakobson (1984); the main contexts of use of the heart are the expression of love, appreciation, and gratitude. Finally, we comment on the "transfer" of functions of the heart from street to screen and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word creativity has a very recent history in the Spanish lexicon -1983 in the Manual Dictionary of theRAE. Although the word is attested since the early years of the twentieth century, the occurrences will be very low until the seventies. On the other hand, the definition refers to the verb create, which presents a complex etymology in Spanish.The aim of this paper is to examine the linguistic and social genealogy of the concept of creativity in Spanish. Special attention will be paid to the origins, the changes in the definitions and the current combinatorial of the word. It will be seen then that, in order for the word to emerge, society had to detach itself from numerous inertias, so the trajectory of the term serves as an example of the process of humanization and secularization of society and science since the 19th century. It shows, in short, the link between language and society through the analysis of a concept that has become a hallmark of 21st century society. In order to carry out the work, the corpus of the Academy, CORDE, CREA, CORPES XXI and the New Lexicographical Treasure of the Spanish language have been used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims the analysis of the intervocalic /d/ in the discourse of the Andalusian presidents of the Government and ministers in Madrid between 1923 and 2011. We are interested to observe if the Andalusian speakers of a high sociocultural stratum in the capital loss or maintain the intervocalic /d/, taking into account different linguistic variables that may influence it, and also contrasting the results with a series of social variables. Our objective is to obtain concrete data of the behaviour of this phenomenon when coming into contact with a more conservative variety of Spanish, but also more normative and prestigious. The results achieved reveal a convergence towards the national standard, with a great maintenance of the intervocalic /d/, turning out several factors, both linguistic and social, significant in the choice of one or another solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide a historical sojourn from the origin to the present-day state of the surviving Spanish-based creoles, namely, Papiamento, Palenquero and Chabacano, in order to offer a brief description of their main characteristics on the lexical, morphosyntactic and phonological levels. At the same time, taking into account the criteria outlined by the Unesco regarding the survival and extinction of languages, the article foresees the future of these Spanish-based creoles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of style within the variationist tradition of Sociolinguistics has been ancillary until very recently despite this centrality in sociolinguistic variation: it has been merely used as an independent variable (extralinguistic parameter) in the correlation of linguistic and extralinguistic variables, rather than as a sociolinguistic resource where to investigate speakers' style management, its effective use, and how style reflects and transmits social meaning -which is both social and linguistic. The variability present within a given speech community is not just a matter of socio-demographic differences among speakers as reflected on their speech (inter-speaker variation), but also -and crucially-different speech styles based on situational contexts, audienceship and/or the image intended to project. The aim of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the main different theoretical approaches developed of stylistic variation in Sociolinguistics: Audio-monitorisation, Audience Design, Script Design, Functional Register and Speaker Design models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]