Fitxa persona

Mercedes Quilis Merín is Professor of Spanish Language in the Department of Spanish Philology at the Universitat de València, where she has taught continuously since 1989. She earned a degree in Hispanic Philology from the Universitat de València in 1987 and a PhD in Philology from the same university in 1997 with the dissertation Perspectivas actuales para el estudio de la protohistoria del español. El problema de la F- inicial: entre la oralidad y la escritura. She has been awarded five teaching assessment periods (quinquenios) and four research assessment periods (sexenios). She is a member of the research group HISLEDIA, Historia e historiografía de la lengua española en su diacronía (GIUV2013-080) at the Universitat de València and of the Transfer and Research Group LINGUALITARIAS. She has supervised six doctoral dissertations in the Department of Spanish Philology: Estudio de aspectos gramaticales relacionados con la concordancia y su didáctica en la Educación Primaria, defended by Eduardo España in 2010, co-supervised with M. Aleza; El lenguaje de la práctica teatral, defended by Guillermo Abad Canós in 2016, co-supervised with Antoni Tordera; El paisaje lingüístico chino-español en la ciudad de Valencia y su aplicación a la enseñanza de ELE a sinohablantes, defended by Yujing Ma in 2019; El cambio de la F etimológica en oralidad y escrituralidad desde las perspectivas de la lingüística románica, defended by Yohei Mishima in 2020, co-supervised with Adela García Valle; Edición y estudio temático-lingüístico del quinto cuaderno del manuscrito aljamiado-morisco J52, by Fatma Kamal Abddel Hamid, defended in 2025, co-supervised with Mohammad Abd-el-Latif and Amparo Ricós; and the cotutelle dissertation with the University of Heidelberg, El impacto de la política lingüística familiar en la competencia de los hablantes de español como lengua de herencia en Alemania, by Ana Gómez-Pavón Durán, co-supervised with Óscar Loureda Lamas. She is currently supervising two doctoral dissertations.

Since 1989, she has continuously participated as a researcher in several funded research projects on the history and historiography of the Spanish language in the Department of Spanish Philology, under the direction of M. Teresa Echenique and M. José Martínez Alcalde. She is currently a researcher in the project La lengua y su enseñanza en la prensa española: de la Ley Moyano al fin de la II República (1857–1939), led by M. José García Folgado (Universitat de València). Her research has focused on the history of the Spanish language. She is the author of Orígenes históricos de la lengua española (1999), a review of the linguistic state of the Iberian Peninsula during a period not addressed by Menéndez Pidal, from which studies on orality and writing in the early period have derived, especially concerning the evolution of initial Latin F in the earliest stages of Spanish (“La F- inicial latina en los orígenes de la lengua española,” Parts I and II, published in Anuario de Filología Vasca Julio de Urquijo). She has also worked in the field of Spanish linguistic historiography alongside María José Martínez Alcalde on issues such as language periodization, the status of Latin American Spanish in grammatical and historical treatises, eighteenth-century lexicographic projects, and the contrastive historiography of Peninsular linguistic varieties.

Her principal scholarly activity has focused on the historiographical treatment of historical Spanish lexicography, both monolingual and multilingual, including studies on Nebrija, Covarrubias, Terreros, and Salvá, among others, with particular attention to historical phraseology, orthography in dictionaries, and aspects of linguistic ideology in these works. The main part of her research centers on nineteenth-century general lexicography, both academic and non-academic, particularly the work of Ramón Joaquín Domínguez and Luisa Lacal de Bracho. She has also addressed current issues concerning the norms and usage of Spanish and is co-author, with Antonio Hidalgo, of Fonética y Fonología españolas (2002, 2004) and La voz del lenguaje (2012), as well as co-editor of El estudio de la prosodia en España en el siglo XIX: perspectivas y ámbitos (2011). Together with Julia Sanmartín, she co-edited the volumes Historia e historiografía de la lexicografía del español (2019) and Retos y avances en lexicografía: los diccionarios del español en el eje de la variación lingüística (2019). Regarding current Spanish language norms, she contributed to the volume Normas y usos correctos en el español actual (2013). Alongside M. Albelda and M. Josep Cuenca, she prepared the Guías de uso para un lenguaje igualitario (2012, in both Spanish and Valencian) for the Universitat de València, as well as the recent Guías de igualdad en el lenguaje (2024, also in Spanish and Valencian). She was part of the drafting team for the Guía de comunicación no sexista of the Instituto Cervantes (2011) and other materials for the Valencian administration and educational contexts with the LINGUALITARIAS group. She has delivered lectures and courses on non-sexist language in academic and administrative settings.

Among other publications in journals such as RFE, BHH, BSEHL, ASJU, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Gramma-Temas, Quaderns de Filologia, RAHL, Orillas, and Revista de Occidente, Moenia, she has contributed to several collective volumes, including Lengua romance en textos latinos de la Edad Media (2003), Historia de la lexicografía (2007), El primitivo romance hispánico (2008), Fronteras de un diccionario: las palabras en movimiento (2009), La Lingüística como reto epistemológico y como acción social (2009), Los diccionarios a través de la historia (2010), Lexicografía en el ámbito hispánico (2010), Modelos latinos en la Castilla Medieval (2010), Historia de la pronunciación de la lengua castellana (2013), Estudios de lingüística e ideología (2014), Métodos y resultados actuales en Historiografía de la Lingüística (2014), Fraseología española: diacronía y codificación (2016), La Historiografía Lingüística como paradigma de investigación (2016), Cómo se “hacen” las unidades fraseológicas: continuidad y renovación en la diacronía del espacio castellano (2018), Nebrija en Bolonia (2019), Creencias y actitudes ante la lengua en la España y América de los siglos XVIII y XIX (2020), El español y las lenguas peninsulares en su diacronía (2020), Noventa años de Orígenes del Español (2020), Lazos entre lingüística y ideología desde un enfoque historiográfico (2020), Investigaciones léxicas. Estados temas y rudimentos (2021), Antonio de Lebrixa, grammatico en su medio milenio (2022), The architecture of grammar (2021), Homo botanicus (2023), and De Estepa a Salamanca: miradas en torno a la lengua (2023).

She has held teaching and research appointments at the Universities of Mainz (Germany, 1992), Ghent (Belgium, 1996), Virginia (USA, 1998), Paris 8–Saint-Denis (France, 2005), Strasbourg (France, 2012), Bologna (Italy, 2014), and Lausanne (Switzerland, 2014), and has participated in more than seventy international and national conferences. She served as Vice-Dean for Culture and Academic Organization at the Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication for two terms (2006–2009 and 2009–2012) and as Secretary of the Department of Spanish Philology (2001–2004). Since 2023, she has been Deputy Director of the Doctoral School at the Universitat de València. From 2016 to 2020, she coordinated the Doctoral Programme in Advanced Hispanic Studies at the Universitat de València. She was Director of the journal Quaderns de Filologia between 2006 and 2012 and co-director of the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística (BSEHL) from 2014 to 2021. She is a member of the Sociedad Española de Lingüística (SEL), the Asociación de Historia de la Lengua Española (AHLE), and the Asociación Española de Estudios Lexicográficos (AELex), whose board she has served on since 2024. She has also served as vice-president and extraordinary board member of the Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística (SEHL) and of the Asociación de Mujeres Investigadoras y Tecnólogas (AMIT)..