This article examines the emergence of local identity and language use in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, from its annexation in 1704 to the present day. Contrary to popular opinion, it shows that the founding population of British Gibraltar was divided along racial and linguistic grounds, and only in the 19th century evolved into a cohesive Spanish-speaking community, before its subsequent development into the bilingual English- and Spanish-speaking society of the present day. Through the analysis of census data, reportage and colonial government records, the article shows that the Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English in Schneider (2007) aptly captures the spread of English knowledge on the Rock. The population’s persistent attachment to its British identity, and its framing of Gibraltar English as a variety of British English, are however theoretically problematic. The article concludes that local identity and language use are dependent as much on the territory’s relationship with Spain as the United Kingdom.
2014. English in Cyprus or Cyprus English: An empirical investigation of variety status. SarahBuschfeld. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013, xvi + 246 pp.. World Englishes 33:3 ► pp. 413 ff.
Evans, Stephen
2014. The evolutionary dynamics of postcolonial Englishes: A Hong Kong case study. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18:5 ► pp. 571 ff.
Evans, Stephen
2015. Testing the Dynamic Model. Journal of English Linguistics 43:3 ► pp. 175 ff.
Hoffmann, Thomas
2019. English Comparative Correlatives,
Hoffmann, Thomas
2021. The Cognitive Foundation of Post-colonial Englishes,
Modiano, Marko
2024. Identity and standards for English as a European Union lingua franca. World Englishes 43:2 ► pp. 210 ff.
Paciorkowski, Tomasz
2018. An Overlooked Colonial English of Europe: the Case of Gibraltar. Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies :23(4) ► pp. 59 ff.
SCHNEIDER, EDGAR W.
2014. New reflections on the evolutionary dynamics of world Englishes. World Englishes 33:1 ► pp. 9 ff.
Velupillai, Viveka
2016. Interview with Edgar W. Schneider. Journal of English Linguistics 44:4 ► pp. 346 ff.
Weston, Daniel
2015. The lesser of two evils: Atypical trajectories in English dialect evolution. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19:5 ► pp. 671 ff.
Weston, Daniel A
2013. Code-switching variation in Gibraltar. International Journal of Bilingualism 17:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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