Linguistic attitudes of Spanish-speaking subjects from Santiago de Chile: beliefs about linguistic correctness

Abstract

We show partial results of the project Linguistic Identity and Attitudes in Spanish-speaking Latin America, that reveal the beliefs about linguistic correctness and its relation with comprehensibility expressed by Spanishspeaking subjects from Santiago de Chile. In order to collect the data we have applied a direct survey to 400 subjects from this city, grouped according to sex, age and socio-economic status. Our findings reveal that correct Spanish,  according to these subjects, matches mainly with Castilian Spanish and is strongly related to comprehensibility and effectiveness in communication. In general terms, beliefs about linguistic correctness are coherent with the monoglossic linguistic culture current in the Spanish-speaking world.