Spanish Sociolinguistic Research Collection, 1978-1992

Tabbed

Description & Rationale

The project includes two online digital collections of audio recordings of Spanish sociolinguistic corpora from Santiago, Chile, and Southern California from the late 1970s and the early 1990s. The recordings, which total 156 hours, were created by University of Southern California professor emerita of Spanish, Portuguese, and linguistics Carmen Silva-Corvalán. They were recorded on original audiocassettes—the majority of which are now nearly 40 years old—and include: 1) 93 hours of recordings from 49 Spanish speakers in Santiago, Chile, during 1978 and 1992; 2) 42 hours of Spanish-language recordings from 47 Mexican-American speakers from various age groups in Southern California in 1976; and 3) 21 hours including much code-switching between Spanish and English by 16 bilingual Mexican-American adolescents from Southern California recorded in 1978.

Reasons for consideration:

These corpora offer rich documentation of Spanish language usage in Santiago and Southern California as well as many facets of the daily experiences of Silva-Corvalán’s
interview subjects. These corpora informed important research by Silva-Corvalán, including her publications Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles (Oxford University Press, 1994); Sociolingüística y pragmática del español (Georgetown University Press, 2001); and Bilingual Language Acquisition: Spanish and English in the First Six Years (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The 156 hours of original recordings provide valuable documentation of Spanish-speaking communities and cultures for linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and many others with an interest in language use in Latin American and U.S. Latino cultures.

Author(s):

various

Source Format:

Audio

Target Format:

Digital

Program:

LARRP

Resource Types:

Other

Regions:

Latin America and Caribbean

North America

Countries of Origin:

Chile

United States

Proposal Contributors:

Barbara Robinson

Posted:

Oct 2, 2018 4:23pm

Updated:

Oct 3, 2018 11:06am

Source Details

Major Languages:

Spanish

Holding Institutions:

University of Southern California

Source and Holdings Notes:

The two Southern California corpora were recorded on audiocassettes during the late 1970s. Although the tapes are in good condition, they are obsolete media and as such are all but inaccessible to researchers who could otherwise benefit from studying them. As with all obsolete media, digitization is the most effective method for preserving the audiovisual information recorded on the original media formats. This project will ensure the information recorded on these original 1970s audiocassettes survives to be studied by future researchers.

Physical Details:

The Chilean corpora total 93 hours, and the Southern California corpora total 63 hours. Digital audio will be captured from the original audiocassette recordings under the supervision of expert staff at the USC Imaging Lab.

Intellectual Property Considerations:

Professor Carmen Silva-Corvalán, who is working closely with us during this multi-year project, will convey the copyright to the 63 hours of recordings we will digitize in our proposed 12-month project. In her signed gift agreement for all previously digitized materials, she has assigned the copyrights to USC And given USC the rights to digitize these materials for free online public access.
To protect the privacy and related rights of Silva-Corvalán’s interview subjects and their families, many of whom are still living, we are redacting identifying personal information from the publicly accessible digital audio recordings in the DPLA and USC Digital Library. We are taking this approach in keeping with best practices for digital library projects that involve personal information. The USC Digital Library has taken similar approaches to other projects involving personal information, and the research value of the recordings does not depend on providing the names and other identifying information for Silva-Corvalán’s interview subjects.
We will preserve the unredacted digital audio recordings along with the redacted versions in the USC Digital Repository.

Activity

Status	Current	Description
Flagged	no	The proposal is flagged for further research.
Vetted	no	The proposal has been examined and vetted.
Ballotted	no	The proposal is currently on a committee ballot.
Approved	no	The proposal has been selected for reformatting. Reformatting efforts are pending.
Reformatted	yes	The proposal has been reformatted and access information is now posted.
Inactive / Declined	no	No longer under consideration for reformatting.