From Typological Diversity to Intralinguistic Variation (and Vice Versa): Familects as a Case Study
doi: https://doi.org/10.31810/rsel.54.1.1
Keywords:
Sociolinguistic typology; exoteric languages; esoteric languages; familects; complexityAbstract
Sociolinguistic typology studies have uncovered diverse social, cultural, and political factors that might account for aspects of the structural complexity of the world’s languages. Accordingly, the languages spoken by close-knit (or esoteric) societies tend to feature more complex phonologies and morphologies, as well as increased semantic opacity. By contrast, the languages spoken by open (or exoteric) societies usually exhibit more syntactic complexity together with greater semantic compositionality. In this paper, we support the view that classical (i.e. variationist) sociolinguistics would benefit from applying this typological approach to the study of intralinguistic variation. Specifically, we argue for relying on the concepts of esotericity and exotericity for achieving a better characterization and understanding of Spanish familects (i.e. the private language varieties used within families). We advance a specific protocol for studying this linguistic variety, as well as a tentative list of features characterizing Spanish familects, which we have posited under the view that familects are esoteric varieties of the standard language, although with some distinctive features compared to the oral vernacular, particularly to informal speech.
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