I started teaching the module "Dialectología hispánica" ('Hispanic
Dialectology') on the Degree in Spanish at the Universidad Autónoma de
Madrid in the 1987-1988 academic year. From that moment onwards, I
immersed myself in the then-available bibliography on the subject. Several
shortcomings soon became evident to me: firstly, the preferential attention
devoted to phonetic and lexical dialectology; secondly, the scarcity of
monographs focusing on Peninsular Spanish, in contrast to the abundant
bibliography of studies on Asturleonese and Aragonese. Lastly, I noticed the
absence of textual corpora that would allow me to find answers to the
questions that assailed me, since traditional dialectal studies did not usually
transcribe genuine materials, except for lists of words or, if we were lucky, a
phrase or two. If the monograph presented texts in a dialect, they were rarely
transcriptions of spoken discourse, but rather contrived compositions created
either by the dialectologist or by some local "authority" on the dialect, who
wanted to show in that brief passage all the most salient "features" of the
dialect. Dialectology also tended to focus on the detection of non-standard or
differential solutions with respect to the standard language, without
recognising their simultaneous coexistence with variants of a more general
nature. It did not seem possible, in this situation, to undertake an adequate
study of many of the dialectal solutions of Spanish: descriptive shortcomings
limited the theoretical analysis of the data.
Faced with these shortcomings (many of which are still pending solution), I
felt that dialectology at the UAM should cease to be a subject based solely on
bibliographical sources and that the reality of the Spanish spoken in rural
areas should be verified on the ground. I was inspired by Diego Catalá, who I
was lucky to hear lecture as a professor of "Dialectología" ('Dialectology').
Catalá led a renewed interest in the theory of dialectology when he applied
structuralism to the interpretation of dialectal solutions back in the 1950s. He
was also an expert field researcher and I was privileged to accompany him on
several surveys aimed at collecting evidence of the traditional romancero.
Encouraged by this aim, I obtained support from the Department of Spanish
and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters to organise a dialectology field trip.
This funding had to be applied for each year until, years later, the initiative
was recognised by the Rectorate of the UAM as faculty fieldwork. A large
part of the COSER recordings have been collected during these field trips and
have been transcribed in preliminary form as part of student coursework or
final degree projects. Another part has been collected and transcribed in the
framework of specific research projects (see
Funding).
Initially, the surveys were designed to document the use of clitics, but it soon became clear that it was possible to study many other aspects subject to variation that had not yet received the attention they deserved. Since then, it has been possible to advance our knowledge of various grammatical aspects
whose interpretation had hitherto been conditioned by the paucity of data
present in the written language or in the speech of the most educated socio-
cultural groups. This advance in our understanding of certain phenomena,
such as the peninsular use of unstressed third person object pronouns, the so-called
neutro de materia (mass / count distinctions), the shift from the imperfect subjunctive to the indicative and the use of reflexive pronouns, has crystallised in various
publications and doctoral theses from the 1990s to the present day. It is now also possible to research certain phonetic changes,
especially in their relation to grammar.
The history of COSER is, in my opinion, an example of how research and
teaching can be combined in such a way that both are enriched and benefit
from a relatively modest investment. Thanks to the continuous support of
multiple generations of students due to teaching activity, it has been possible
to compile a corpus whose magnitude would have required an enormous and
lengthy investment, difficult to reconcile with the usual deadlines for research
projects. Furthermore, through the approach we have adopted, students have
to apply their learning in different ways. On the one hand, they come across
the methodology of sociolinguistic interviewing and the problems it raises
through real-life experience. On the other hand, the recorded conversation
becomes the starting material for the coursework, in which the student is
confronted with the "raw" linguistic data. The student must apply this data to
the subject-specific bibliography and test his or her capacity for analysis and
reasoning on real, rather than purely academic, material. In addition, the data
collected in COSER have made it possible to create an extensive repertoire of
dialectal phenomena which are offered as
dialectal samples, both to UAM students and to other potential users interested in Spanish dialectology.
There are many other lessons to be learned from COSER. The collective
nature of the process necessarily requires teamwork and the collaboration of
the various links in the chain. The ability to work alongside others and as part
of a team says a lot about people, their qualities and their ability to tolerate
others. It tells us a lot about their capacity for reconciliation, ability to stick to
protocols and see a project through. Over the years, I have witnessed
friendships and courtships, and I must also confess, also a few conflicts. I
have also had the good fortune to enjoy the recurrent reliability of a few
evergreen survey addicts and their inexhaustible curiosity for rural speech.
Alongside the interviewers, our informants have been a constant stimulus to
continue our good work. The COSER recordings offer numerous personal
testimonies, often more interesting in their human than in their linguistic
dimension, about life in rural Spain in the second half of the 20th century.
When dealing with what life was like "back then", informants tend to
exemplify their own or their family's life, which is thus often recounted, albeit not always in chronological order, in a way that is comparable and
complementary to oral history projects. We have listened to appalling stories
of death and misery, of pain and injustice, but also of joy and nostalgia. We
have interviewed people who are talkative and intelligent and others who are
taciturn and mysterious. We have learned from all of them.
Inés Fernández-Ordóñez
November 2015
