Maria Sánchez Paraíso

Maria Sánchez Paraíso

Lecturer, Spanish

Contact Information

Research Interests: Spanish sociolinguistics, language variation and change, contact linguistics and bilingualism, Spanish in contact with Quechua, The Andes (Peru)

Education: PhD, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid

Modern Languages and Literatures > People > Maria Sánchez Paraíso

María Sánchez-Paraíso is a lecturer of Spanish language. Her research focuses on the linguistic variation and change in Spanish in contact with Indigenous languages, with a secondary interest in language attitudes and linguistic decolonization.

Sánchez-Paraíso is currently working on a book titled Cambios Inducidos Por Contacto. El Español Andino Peruano: El Sistema Pronominal Átono de Tercera Persona (under contract with Routledge). The book examines clitics in Peruvian Andean Spanish in contact with Quechua. She aims to determine the linguistic and extralinguistic parameters that influence variation and change in this system, following the guidelines of the theoretical framework of Contact Linguistics. Together with Azucena Palacios (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Sánchez-Paraíso edited the book Dinámicas Lingüísticas De Las Situaciones de Contacto (DeGruyter) in 2021. This volume offers in-depth analyses of contact situations between Spanish and other languages (in diachronic and synchronic perspectives), showing how language variation and change are part of the complex linguistic dynamics that characterize contact areas. In the same year, Sánchez-Paraíso (together with Azucena Palacios and Sara Gómez Seibane) published the book Traspasando Lo Lingüístico: Factores Esenciales En El Contacto de Lenguas (Iberoamericana / Vervuert). The book reflects on concepts and factors relevant to the contact of Spanish with other languages that transcend linguistics.

Her research has been presented at national and international conferences.  In January 2024, Sánchez-Paraíso received the ALFAL Award for Best Communication by Young Doctors (Premio ALFAL a la Mejor Comunicación de Jóvenes Doctores) for the paper entitled El Español Andino Peruano de Juliaca: Una Variedad Consolidada ("The Andean Spanish of Juliaca: A Consolidated Language Variety") which examined the linguistic change in Andean Spanish in contact with Quechua caused by the dynamics of the linguistic ecologies between monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish and Quechua speakers. In addition, María Sánchez-Paraíso is a member of the research team “Dinámicas lingüísticas del español en contacto con el arhuaco en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia)” at the University of Antioquía in Colombia. 

Previously, Sánchez-Paraíso was a lecturer at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (France) where she taught courses in Spanish Morphology, Spanish Syntax, and Spanish Phonetics and Phonology (among other courses). She also worked at the Real Academia Española (Royal Academy of Spanish Language) in Spain, where she served as head of the Communication and Culture departments.