Culture as a resource for development. Practices, discourses and representations in contemporary modernising processes. The relationship between culture and the processes and imaginaries of development is a crucial element for the design of new policies, particularly those referring to the cultural and educational spheres, both in the countries of the North and the South. Traditionally, the concept of "development" has been associated with a predominantly economic and growth-related dimension. But the decision of the United Nations to adopt the Human Development Approach proposed by Amartya Sen has designed a new political landscape in which the income component is displaced as the main indicator of development, in favour of a reading of well-being that goes beyond economic growth. In this context, it is pertinent to ask ourselves about the value of culture in times of globalisation, in its two dimensions: as an articulating axis of resistance to the hegemonic discourses on the development model promulgated by some of the main international organisations, and as a product traversed by the market in the process of economic globalisation. Is it possible to think about "development" on the basis of a field (culture) which is problematic in its scientific status, its particular productivity and its dubious innovation? In this context, what deserves consideration, what has always constituted the object of study of the field of the Humanities? How to analyse, from this field, the artistic productions that promote certain representations of "development"? Undoubtedly, the cultural sphere has become a privileged place for representing development processes, giving them intelligibility and projecting social meanings onto them. It is therefore necessary to review the nature of these representations, as well as to analyse and historicise the place given to culture in the institutional design of development strategies and plans, in order to redefine the way in which artistic productions contribute to these processes and the most appropriate way to approach them.
The History and Historiography of the Spanish language in its diachrony (HISLEDIA) group at the UV has a long history. Its lines of research, History of the Spanish language and Historiography of the Spanish language, were initiated by Emilio Ridruejo in the early 1980s and included the creation of a Chair in History of Language and Dialectology, occupied by María Teresa Echenique Elizondo in 1987. After Emilio Ridruejo's transfer to the University of Valladolid in 1988, the group was led by María Teresa Echenique until her retirement in 2020, when the chair was handed over to María José Martínez Alcalde.
The HISLEDIA group has developed ten research projects funded in competitive calls in which researchers from various Spanish and foreign universities have participated, contributing to the international projection of the group and the consolidation of its research activity.
Since its creation, the group has tackled fundamental aspects of the study of the evolution of Spanish in historical and historiographical terms, without ever losing sight of the contrastive perspective in its relationship with the rest of the Hispanic languages and modalities, mainly Basque, Catalan and Portuguese. Particular attention has been paid to the following issues:
- History of the Castilian language throughout its diachronic evolution in contact with other peninsular linguistic modalities.
- Phraseology and phraseometry of the Castilian language in its diachrony.
- Philological study of the origins of the Castilian language.
- History of the pronunciation of Castilian.
- Grammatical, orthographic and lexicographic codification of the Castilian language.
- The standard of the Castilian language from a historiographical point of view: grammars, orthographies and dictionaries.
The members of the group have participated in leading national and international congresses in their speciality, as well as producing a significant number of high impact publications in their field (as a group and individually), and have a solid track record in the training of research personnel and the supervision of doctoral theses. It has extensive experience in organising congresses, symposia, conferences and specialist meetings. Among them, the 5th International Congress on the History of the Spanish Language (Universitat de València, 2000), the International Symposium "Lexicography, Grammatical Codification and Phraseology in honour to G. Haensch" (Universitat de València and Universität Augsburg, 2003), the exhibition "Rafael Lapesa's Legacy: Valencia 1908-Madrid 2002" (Valencian Library and Cervantes Institute, 2008), the 26th Congrès Internacional de Lingüística i Filologia Romàniques (Valencian for International Congress of Linguistics and Romanic Philology) (Valencia, 2010) with a section expressly related to the group's research, the Symposium on Grammatical Codification of Spanish: History and Historiography (Universitat de València, 2004), the International Conference on Historical Phraseology (first and second editions, Universitat de València, 2015 and 2016), the coordination of the Historical Phraseology Section of the Congress of German Hispanists (Munich, 2017), the International Scientific Meeting Contrastive History of the Spanish Language and its Historiography (Universitat de València, 2018) and the organisation of the 13th Congress of the Spanish Society of Linguistic Historiography (Universitat de València, 2022).
The group's research has resulted, among many other publications, in the following works: Phraseology in Spanish: diachrony and codification (CSIC, 2017), Phraseology through the history of the Spanish language and its historiography (Tirant Humanidades, 2017), How phraseological units are made: continuity and renewal in the diachrony of the Castilian space (Peter Lang, 2018) and DHISFRAES. Historical phraseological dictionary of Spanish. A lexicographical task for the 21st century. Combinations of prepositional and adverbial locutionary character. Archetypal sample (ed. by María Teresa Echenique and Francisco P. Pla based on the corpus compiled by the HISLEDIA group, Peter Lang, 2021).
