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Copyright of International Journal of Foreign Languages / Revista Internacional de Lenguas Extranjeras is the property of Universitat Rovira I Virgili and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Argentina de Historiografia Linguistica is the property of Revista Argentina de Historiografia Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study is based mainly on conversations extracted from a corpus of spoken Spanish gathered in the metropolitan area of Valencia, Spain (Briz and Val.Es.Co Group 2002). Adopting a socio-pragmatic perspective (Bravo and Briz 2004), our purpose is to describe the social effects produced by the use of certain strategies related to (im)politeness phenomena in face-to-face interaction with the ongoing negotiation of participants' face (Goffman 1967). We will refer in this paper to Culpeper's concept of authentic impoliteness (1996, 2003, 2005), aimed at describing the damage of a bearer's face. For this author, insults constitute intentionally threatening acts. However, in our study we found that some expressions commonly used for insulting or mocking can, in certain contexts, produce an affiliative social effect, strengthening feelings of solidarity within a group and of closeness between interlocutors. We call this use non-authentic impoliteness. Kienpointner (1997) and Culpeper (op. cit.) identify this impoliteness as mock impoliteness. In turn, Zimmermann (2003) uses the term anti-politeness to refer to similar strategies of impoliteness. We follow Zimmermann's concept but without restricting it to the function of creating male teen identity only. This is because in the Spanish society we observe other groups in which such identity feature is absent. We also take into account Bravo's concepts relative to the crucial role of context to consider participants' expectations and shared knowledge in a given society, such as Bravo's socio-cultural hypothesis (2003: 104; Bravo, in this volume). In our analysis of colloquial interactions, we have registered different linguistic realisations that can be classified as insults in their unmarked form. This unmarkedness is not present in all instances: In certain cases, for example, insults can encourage an interpersonal affiliation between participants. The markedness of insults depends on certain contextual factors (such as interactions between close friends) and an adequate socio-cultural contextualisation and textual co-textualisation. As mentioned above, this markedness would constitute realisations of non-authentic impoliteness. It seems then that there would be a principle of no offence between participants that characterises the communicative exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Valencian Community is an area in Spain where Valencian, a variety of Catalan, is the co-official language along with Spanish. Differently from other bilingual areas in Spain, the unique historical circumstances that the Valencian Community underwent have led to the current linguistic and ideological conflict in the area. The historical division between Spanish versus Valencian, with Spanish being the high prestige language, was reinforced during Franco's dictatorship. After Franco's death, there was a slow process of language normalisation intended to reinforce the use of the local language. In Valencia, this situation was hindered by the birth of a secessionist movement claiming that Valencian and Catalan were two different languages. This ideological situation frames the language policy in Valencia and is reflected in the public space. This paper analyses 248 linguistic landscape items collected in two urban sites representing public and private institutions. The data uncover existing conflicts such as the inconsistency between institutional norms and language practices, and provide evidence of the implicit and explicit mechanisms that determine 'de facto language policies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic policy measures have an undeniable effect on the linguistic attitudes of a population and, consequently, on the use of the languages concerned. In Valencia, the process of Catalan revitalization, which started in the early 80s, has had some very positive effects, of which education – especially of the youngest members of the population – in Catalan, has been the most important. A 1998 study assessed how the three language varieties that coexist in Valencia are perceived. Ten years later, this study has been replicated in order to analyze the effects of the great demographic and political changes during those years. The attenuation of the ideological conflict between Catalan and Castilian can be attributed to language policy. It seems difficult, however, to explain the disappearance of Valencian (the local variety of Catalan) as the language of group identity. The institutionalization of the conflict between Valencian and Catalan has led to ‘linguistic peace’, but it has also weakened attachment to Valencian, representing a major setback to its revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]