Pluricentrism and teaching of Spanish foreign language. Materials for the Colombian context with the Instituto Caro y Cuervo (ICC) seal

Abstract

The teaching of Spanish as a foreign language (ELE, Spanish acronym) is a functional and mental space whose language model must be made explicit for every teaching context. The publishing industry mainly uses the European Spanish model (Northern Castilian, even in the creation of materials for Latin America). This model is the one explicitly assumed and spread by the Instituto Cervantes. Currently, the prestige of American standards, with variants of strong roots and normative explicitness, makes the pluricentricity of Spanish visible. As the learning of Spanish in the world is implemented from different Hispanic nations, the choice of the peninsular model for the American context is in doubt. The analysis of ELE materials produced for the Colombian context allows us to recognize the importance of the concept of pluricentrism when it is assumed in planning tasks in the teaching language from endonormative parameters of the community itself. In §1 the theoretical weakness of reconciling pluricentrism and panhispanism will be addressed. Section §2 explains some normative dynamics of ELE teaching. Section §3 analyzes the pluricentricism of ELE teaching for the Colombian context and the reflection of its linguistic norms in the teaching manuals chosen for this study. Finally, the conclusions underline the importance of ELE teaching in order to visualize and spread standardized variants of Colombian Spanish within of Hispanic pluricentrism.