News

At the II Xeira CLARIA-GAL, celebrated at the Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILGA), ViEW member Elena Seoane presented a poster on the three corpora that are currently being compiled on Gibraltar English: (i) The Gibraltarian component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GBR), the Spoken Corpus of Gibraltar English (SGibE) and The Corpus of Gibraltar Press (GibPress). The Poster also featured resources compiled by Javier Pérez Guerra and Nuria Yáñez Bouza, members of LVTC.

On 2 June, Elena Seoane delivered a talk titled "World Englishes Next Door: Language Dynamics in Gibraltar" at the University of Oviedo, invited by the research group Linguo (Department of English, French and German Philology). Aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as Faculty members, the talk will provide an introduction to the field of World Englishes and illustrate its application through an analysis of Gibraltar's multilingual context.

We are deeply grateful to the member of Linguo for their kind invitation-

The book Gibraltarians and their Language - 22 Linguistic Biographies, edited by team members Elena Seoane, M.G. Sanchez, Lucía Loureiro-Porto and Cristina Suárez-Gómez (2024, Servició de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo) was presented to each secondary and upper primary school in Gibraltar, as well as to Gibraltar College, during a public event attended by Minister John Cortes.

Through discussion of the book, the presenters highlighted the importance of addressing the ever-increasing problem of language loss among young Gibraltarians, with the aim of raising awareness and reversing this process with the help of local educators.

The Llanito podcast episode of 12 February an interview to Elena Seoane on linguistic and demographic aspects of Llanito and its future in Gibraltar.

The programme's summary reads as follows:

The interest in Gibraltar’s Llanito language is widespread piquing the interest of linguists in different part of the world. Llanito is a reflection of Gibraltar's past, a marker of its present, and a key to its future. It embodies the complex and multi-layered identity of the Gibraltarian people, capturing the essence of our history, culture, and community.

Professor Elena Seone from the University of Vigo was first interested in Gibraltar English, but has become an advocate of Llanito.

The episode can be found here.

La Sexta TV programme Noticias Fin de Semana aired a short clip on our research on Llanito on 12 January 2025.

Later, on 19 February, newspaper ABC includes Elena Seoane's comments on the recent announcement by Gibraltarian Minister John Cortes that Spanish will be taught at Gibraltarian schools.

On 10 December, CanalSur aired an interview to Elena Seoane in which she discusses the linguistic demography of Gibraltar and the rapid changes it is undergoing in this century. She also mentions the reasons for the shift towards monolingualism in Gibraltar. The interview is available here (minute 24 onwards).

Our team member Elena Seoane was interviewed last week on GBC News (Gibraltar's public service broadcaster), which highlighted the role of our latest book, stating 'Linguistic biographies show that Gibraltar offers much more than just British English.' In the interview, Elena praised various initiatives promoting Gibraltar's cultural heritage, with a particular focus on its multilingualism. The full interview is available in this video.

Last week our latest book, Gibraltarians and their Language - 22 Linguistic Biographies, was launched in Gibraltar, alongside three publications of Patuka Press, an author collective run by Giordano Durante. Two extracts from the linguistic biographies were read by Humbert Hernandez and Claire Trinidad. The event was covered by YGTV and Gibraltar Chronicle.

Elena Seoane's interview with Jonathan Scott on GBC has reached the Spanish media. Both the Huffington Post and Faro de Vigo have published pieces highlighting Elena's defense of Llanito and her overall description of the sociolinguistic situation in Gibraltar.