Sociolinguistic approach to the Gibraltarian community: Yanito in contemporary media

Abstract

Several articles suggesting the disappearance of yanito have been published over the years. However, this linguistic phenomenon has not yet been widely studied in the field of social media, where several websites are working on preserving yanito by taking advantage of the multiple resources made available by the new digital tools. Due to the paucity of research on yanito in social media, a functional analysis of code-switching used in Gibraltarian public media such as television and print media as well as in social media will be carried out on the basis of the functional categories of code-switching established by Gumperz (1982), San (2009) and Montes-Alcalá (2007). The purpose of this study is to explore and determine possible differences regarding speakers' use of code-switching in distinct communication spheres, thus checking whether new functions of code-switching identified on the Internet, linked to the linguistic identity of the users, could possibly reverse its decline.