Language, Borders and Bordering Practices / Lenguaje, fronteras y practicas de fronterizacion

From the end of the 1980s on, the concept of borders has undergone a series of new interpretations. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) provided not only a different way of interpreting borders in literary studies; it also had a notable impact on cultural studies. The border concept also received novel treatment in sociolinguistics, thanks to a spatial shift coming from theoretical proposals in cultural geography, postcolonial theoretical perspectives, and increasingly a de(s)colonial gaze. What all these aforementioned perspectives have in common is an understanding of borders not as lines of demarcation and division, or as symbolizing binaries that oppose the internal, the known, and the proper to the external, the unknown, and the foreign (among other oppositions), but rather as complex phenomena.

This volume gathers 16 studies divided in four sections and a final discussion that address the concept of borders and boundaries in sociolinguistics-understood in its broad sense as the discipline that investigates (and advocates for) the intersection between language and society. It explores the interstices and grey zones in the linguistic negotiation of space/place, ethnic group/race, class, sex/gender, and other social manifestations, to rethink how these border zones should be treated theoretically and methodologically in order to better understand speakers and their practices.

The volume has also sought to bring together the (English and Spanish) voices of highly recognized sociolinguists and those of very talented young scholars, to offer a cutting-edge publication on a topic of great relevance to the social sciences in general.