Background sources are helpful at the beginning of your research process. These sources will help you find keywords and related terms associated with the topic you selected. These keywords and related terms are useful because they will help you find information connected with your topic. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and even Wikipedia are common background sources. Keep in mind that background sources, although very useful, are not considered peer-reviewed. We will cover scholarly sources soon.
Diccionario básico de lingüística by 
Diccionario de Terminologia Linguistica Actual by 
Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica by 
Para un diccionario de locuciones: de la lingüística teórica a la fraseografía práctica by Keywords and related terms are those words and phrases that are related to the topic. These terms may be synonymous with a word contained in your topic or a related term. We use keywords to enhance our searches and gather as much literature as we can in relation to a topic.
| Keyword | Related terms |
| Posición silábica | complejidad silábica; procesos fonológicos; contextos fonológicos; variaciones sociofonéticas; actitudes lingüísticas |
| realización alofónica | variación alofónica; grupo consonántico /t̪ ɾ/; sonido oclusivo y sonido vibrante simple; variables zona geográfica; modalidad discursive; grupo fonémico |
| velarización and elisión | producción de las nasales; articulación, hipoarticulación, hiperarticulación; vocal neutra; velarización de oclusivas labiales posnucleares |
| yeísmo | yeísmo rehilado; vaya / valla; y / ll; y griega / elle; español de Valencia, Uruguay; synchronic and diachronic perspectives; language analysis; rehilamiento and devoicing; phonological and phonetic process |
| préstamos y el cambio de código | cambios de codigo monolexicos; spanglish; lenguas en contacto; alternancia de codigos; lexical code switching; code-switching, |
Boolean operators help you connect, expand or exclude your searches. There are three Boolean operators, which must be written in capital letters to differentiate them from conjunctions:
Note that I am using mostly nouns as search terms.
préstamos AND cambio de código AND Spanglish
yeísmo AND Uruguay OR devoicing OR diachronic approach OR dialectology
yeísmo AND Uruguay NOT Valencia
fricatización AND /r/ OR fricación OR frication OR genre OR género
seseo OR ceceo AND Granada OR Sevilla OR Andalu*
variación lingüistica OR linguistic variation AND préstamos AND cambio de código
When you evaluate information, you are looking at certain criteria that will help you decide how useful the material is for you. You can determine whether a book or article is a scholarly source, also known as peer-reviewed and authoritative by applying the following criteria:
When was it published? In what year?
Who did it write it? is the author an expert on the subject?
What publishing house published the work?
Is it academic?
Is it government-based?
Is it recognized for its quality and objectivity?
What point of view is the author presenting? Is the author partial or impartial?
Is it considered an opinion or investigative or analysis piece?
What is it about?
Is it general or covers the topic in-depth?
Who is the audience?
university students, popular, experts in the topic?
Now it is your turn to try some searches. Go to https://libraries.colorado.edu/ and remember what you learned in this guide. You can use the filters in OneSearch to limit your search by "peer-reviewed."
Go
