Belizean Varieties of Spanish: Language Contact and Plurilingual Practices

Abstract

The current paper focusses on Spanish (de facto second official language) in contact with English (official language) and Belize Kriol (considered to be a lingua franca). These three languages are numerically the majority languages and, as a consequence, are an important axis of study for multilingualism. Previous quantitative analysis of interviews with a cohort of Spanish speakers who use all three languages in the same utterance are examined within the context of linguistic ideologies to draw insights into the Belizean semiotic landscape and the ways in which speakers enact linguistic agency. More than linguistic competency, this analysis makes evident speakers’ plurilingual competency which entails simultaneously navigating ideological norms as well as mulitple grammatical systems.