Fitxa persona

MERCEDES QUILIS MERÍN is Professor of Spanish Language in the Department of Spanish Philology at the Universitat de València (Spain) where she has been teaching continuously since 1989. She graduated from the Universitat de València in Hispanic Philology in 1987 and obtained her PhD in Philology from the same university in 1997 with the thesis Perspectivas actuales para el estudio de la protohistoria del español. The problem of the initial F-: between orality and writing. She has five five-year teaching periods and three six-year research periods. She is a member of the research group HISLEDIA, Historia e historiografía de la lengua española en su diacronía (GIUV2013-080) of the Universitat de València and of the LINGUALITARIAS research and transfer group.

She has directed four doctoral theses in the Department of Spanish Philology: Estudio de aspectos gramaticales relacionados con la concordancia y su didáctica en la Educación Primaria, by Eduardo España, 2010, co-directed with M. Aleza; El lenguaje de la práctica teatral,  by Guillermo Abad Canós, 2016, co-directed with Antoni Tordera; El paisaje lingüístico chino-español en la ciudad de Valencia y su aplicación a la enseñanza de ELE a sinohablantes,  by Yujing Ma, 2019 and El cambio de la F etimológica en oralidad y escrituralidad desde las perspectivas de la lingüística románica, by Yohei Mishima, 2020, co-directed with Adela García Valle. She is currently supervising four doctoral theses.  
She has taken part 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, from 1989 to the present day. She is currently a researcher on the project La lengua y su enseñanza en la prensa española: de la Ley Moyano al fin de la II República (1857-1939), M. José García Folgado as IP (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 Peninsula in the period not addressed by Menéndez Pidal, from which studies have been derived devoted to orality and writing in the period of origins, especially on the evolution of the Latin initial F in the early stages of Spanish (‘La F- inicial latina en los orígenes de la lengua española I y II,  Anuario de Filología Vasca Julio de Urquijo). She has worked in the field of the linguistic historiography of Spanish together with María José Martínez Alcalde (problems of periodisation of the language, the status of American Spanish in grammatical and historical treatises on Spanish, lexicographical projects in the 18th century, contrastive historiography of the peninsular linguistic varieties). Her main activity has been the historiographical treatment of the historical lexicography of Spanish, both monolingual and multilingual, with studies on Nebrija, Covarrubias, Terreros or Salvá among others, and in particular on the aspects of historical phraseology and orthography in dictionaries, as well as the linguistic ideology in these works. The main part of her research focuses on the general lexicography of the 19th century, both academic and non-academic, and in particular on the dictionaries of Ramón Joaquín Domínguez and Luisa Lacal de Bracho.

She has dealt with current issues on the norm and use of Spanish and is co-author with Antonio Hidalgo of Fonética y Fonología españolas (2002, 2004) and La voz del lenguaje (2012) and co-editor of El estudio de la prosodia en España en el siglo XIX: perspectivas y ámbitos (2011). As co-editor, together with Julia Sanmartín, she has prepared 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). In relation to the current norms of Spanish, he has collaborated in the volume Normas y usos correctos en el español actual (2013). Together with M. Albelda and M. Josep Cuenca, she has written the University of Valencia's Guías de uso para un lenguaje igualitario (2012, spanish and valencian), and the recent Guías de igualdad en el lenguaje (2024, spanish and valencian). She has been part of the drafting team for the Cervantes Institute's Guide to non-sexist communication (2011) and other materials for the Valencian Administration and teaching with the LINGUALITARIAS group. She has given lectures and courses on non-sexist language in the academic and administrative fields. Among other publications in journals (RFE, BHH, BSEHL, ASJU, Beiträge zur Geschichteder Sprachwissenschaft, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen Gramma-Temas, Quaderns de Filologia, RAHL, Orillas, Revista de Occidente.... ), she has collaborated in various collective volumes: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), De Estepa a Salamanca: miradas en torno a la lengua (2023). 

She has carried out teaching and research stays 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 has been Vice-Dean in the area of Culture and Academic Organisation of the Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication for two terms (2006-2009; 2009-2012) and Secretary of the Department of Spanish Philology (2001-2004). Currently (2023-) she is Vice-Director of the Doctoral School of the Unversitat de València. From 2016 to 2020 she was Coordinator of the Doctoral Programme in Advanced Hispanic Studies at the Universitat de València. She was Director of the journal Quaderns de Filologia of the Universitat de València between 2006 and 2012 and co-director from 2014 to 2021 of the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística (BSEHL). She is a member of several linguistic societies: SEL, AHLE, AELex (Asociación Española de Lexicografía), of whose board of directors she has been a member since 2024, and has been vice-president and extraordinary member of the SEHL (Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística).