To what extent has the role of dubbing contributed to the promotion of the linguistic standard in Galicia: a diachronic, corpus-based approach

n 2007, at the ‘I Congreso de Tradución para a dobraxe en Galicia, País Vasco e Cataluña’ held at the Universidade de Vigo, Ramón Novo, a language assessor for Televisión de Galicia, presented a paper that sought to outline some of the key areas in which language use in dubbed television programming has failed to subscribe to the linguistic expectations of normative Galician since its first broadcasting in the mid-1980s (Novo 2010). As a result of complex, disjointed workflows, dubbed programming, an important tool for the dissemination and normalisation of Galician since this time, attests linguistic variation with regards to what is considered standard and non-standard. This article seeks to understand how language used in dubbed content in Galicia has evolved diachronically in light of the observations made by Novo. The diachronic analysis is undertaken using CAQDAS software as an alternative to traditional, corpus-based technologies. In addition, the article will also provide a contextualising discussion and analysis of Galicia’s mediascape (Hokowhitu & Devadas 2013) from 1985 to 2008 (the period covered by the corpus) and will define the link that exists between language planning, the media and dubbing. This article concludes that language use in dubbed content in Galicia attests a trend of increased standardisation in some contexts and further non-standard usage in others. Furthermore, it also suggests that strategies are used in certain contexts to avoid situations where non-normative language might occur.