[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

This article is an introduction to an alternative, interdisciplinary view over the problem of the vitality of the so-called a fala – a geolect used in the Xálima valley (Cáceres province, Spain), by the Portuguese border, quite well-known in the Iberian studies. The existent literature concerning the problem is based mainly on the historical material and is not capable of fully explaining its maintenance mechanism in the today’s world. In the author’s opinion, it is necessary to take into consideration, on the one hand, the role played by a fala in the society and, on the other hand, the geolect’s specific, phonetic properties, which – as it is supposed – are sufficiently salient from the perceptual point of view so as to activate the Xálima inhabitants’ different identity processes (hypothetical non-belonging features) and, in consequence, protect the geolect from the standardization. The article outlines the most promising research direction and presents some useful theoretical tools associated with the problem’s social facet explaining the way of its application to the nonbelonging features (the holistic vision of the self and its identity included in G. Breakwell’s Identity Process Theory and in the Stets and Burke’s general theory of the self).