Linguistic and symbolic differences in the discourse of young Ecuadorians residing in Madrid.

Abstract

Although one of the defining features of socio-political groups is that they generally are imagined communities (Anderson, 1983), in the sense that they are not natural, the differences between them allow at least some illusion of reality, that in some of them provokes the raising of frontiers which may be interpreted more or less objectively, inasmuch as they may induce to conceive as natural the groups associated to them. Besides such frontiers, which lose sight of the diversity inherent to any group (Ambadiang, Palacios & García Parejo, forthc.), others may be thought of which are more dynamic and more in harmony with the processes which are typical of contact situations. Based on this observation, we intend to discuss the relevance of the linguistic and culture differences and of their use in the construction of the individual and collective identities of young Ecuadorians residing in a very specific context: the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid. On the basis of the narratives implicit in the answers to a questionnaire administered to 56 Ecuadorian students of Secondary Education, we intend to determine the way they discursively construct their social identity, and the role of linguistic variation in this process. The facts suggest that the processes of categorization the young Ecuadorians resort to articulate around three basic strategies which mean considering the community of Spaniards, respectively, as (i) a mere term of comparison, (ii) a source of (generally negative) categorizations, or (iii) in terms of a mirror image