El español clásico

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish underwent a process of codification through a selection of linguistic features carried out by normative agents such as courtiers, printers, grammarians, writers, or poets. Therefore, Golden Age or classical Spanish represents a crucial period in the development of Spanish as a standardised, supralocated, national language. Previous scholarly literature has emphasized processes of standardization and convergence and has given much attention to social norms, styles, registers, ethnolects, brigands’ parlance, rustic jargons, and other linguistic conventions, but has failed to systematically examine the way in which linguistic variables correlate with social and stylistic dimensions. The present chapter attempts to show how regional variants (geographical or horizontal variation) acquire overt prestige and become social markers (social or vertical variation) or otherwise remain restricted to colloquial speech. Firstly, it will provide the reader with a concise description of the main linguistic features characterizing classical Spanish. Secondly, the chapter will explore to what extent the sociolinguistic estratification of Golden Age Spanish results from the Madrid courtly norm (norma madrileña).