Re‐writing Galicia: Spelling and the construction of social space

Abstract

This paper addresses societal power relations and the way they are reflected in the public space of Galicia (Spain). It reflects on the struggles concerning the presence, contestation, and erasure of language(s) within the city of A Coruña, one of the main Galician cities. The three different spellings for the city name symbolize the struggle between social agents with different backgrounds, ideologies, and aims: linguistic conflict is thus homologous with the social conflict. Each spelling indexes different glottopolitical stances and traces different boundaries for different imagined spaces and communities. I focus on the ‘war of spelling’ and its impact on the linguistic landscape, highlighting the importance of diacritics in indexing identities. In the light of these two points, I address the tensions that can be detected in the production of the new city logo, which constitutes an attempt to erase the linguistic and social conflict.

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