Notes on the Río de la Plata standard

Abstract

Within the theoretical framework inspired by Coserian functionalism, this article aims to show, for the case of Rioplatense Spanish, that varieties constitute a continuum within regional, representational and historical spaces, and this crossover must be described in order to understand the functioning of this variety as a regional standard. The article focuses on the analysis of Rioplatense to illustrate the methodological productivity entailed in understanding the concepts of "reference standard" and "empirical standard" as mobile and diffuse categories. The paper shows some features of this non-dominant variety, which at the same time has a strong projection at the national level and even on the Spanish regional space. In order to highlight the crossover variables, firstly the article provides a brief context of speakers' attitudes towards the variety, and later presents four current cases in which the Rioplatense linguistic standard is tensioned by a cluster of factors: the transfer of the Spanish proficiency exam CELU from an Argentine public institution to a private peninsular agency; the attention to the Real Academia Española in the Argentine national linguistic legislation; the differentiated processes of linguistic identification that Argentine speakers manifest before the Spanish of dubbing; and, finally, the management of non-normative spelling ruled by the new technologies of the written word.