Contacto linguistico, bilinguismo e ideologia linguistica en el pueblo de Olivenza: ?castellano o portugues

The region and village of Olivenza belonged to Portugal until 1801 when it became part of Spain. This political change gave rise to important linguistic changes. Spanish became the main administrative language whereas Portuguese was the daily language of most of the population of the village. This situation had important consequences: on the one hand, once education became available to every segment of the population, the already unbalanced bilingualism brought with it the possibility of the disappearance of the Portuguese language in Olivenza. In fact, most of the speakers of the Oliventian variety of Portuguese were born before 1960. After 1975 certain regions in Spain supported the study of regional languages such as Catalan, Basque and Galician, but it took a bit longer for Extremadura to follow this path with regard to Portuguese.;This study analyzes the linguistic situation of the region and village of Olivenza in Extremadura, Spain, from a sociolinguistic and ideological point of view. This thesis explains how Portuguese is being implemented in the region of Olivenza and what the linguistic consequences of this revival are. First, the linguistic features of the variety of Portuguese spoken in Olivenza are analyzed from a phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical point of view. The main influence of Spanish on the Portuguese language appears in the lexical field, although there are important morphological and syntactical aspects. After paying attention to the examples of linguistic contact between Spanish and Portuguese such as code-switching, borrowing and linguistic calque, this analysis proves that the language spoken by the older generations in Olivenza is a variety of Portuguese and not a form of portunol , a term that is not very useful term to describe either the linguistic or sociolinguistic situation of the area.;The study of the status of both Spanish and Portuguese in the Educational System in Extremadura shows that Portuguese has become the most popular second language in the region of Olivenza. Yet as far as the revival of the Portuguese language in Olivenza is concerned, this academic recovery does not imply necessarily the revitalization of Portuguese as a living language. While the study of Portuguese in the schools of the area will bring a revival of the language in Olivenza, the implementation of Portuguese in education may also mean the death of the Portuguese language in the region, since the variety of Portuguese that is being taught in schools is standard Portuguese. Consequently, the variety of Portuguese spoken by the older generations in Olivenza will not be transmitted from generation to generation, since it will be threatened not only by Spanish but also by standard Portuguese. The study of standard Portuguese should be accompanied by a revitalization of the language as a native one, which can only be achieved by studying, recovering and using the variety that older generations of Olivenza still consider as their own. This is a complicated sociolinguistic situation. Nevertheless, from an educational point of view, it is much easier to teach and implement the standard language. By using the standard Portuguese language in education, Portuguese will be revitalized but, at the same time, it may disappear as a native language in Olivenza.