Review: "A Political History of Spanish. The Making of a Language". Edited by José del Valle (2013). [In: The Linguist List Issue 26.4596] (original) (raw)

Language, politics and history: an introductory essay

The Making of a Language, 2013

Spanish is spoken as a first language by almost 400 million people in approximately sixty countries, and has been the subject of numerous political processes and debates since it began to spread globally from Iberia in the fifteenth century. A Political History of Spanish brings together a team of experts to analyze the metalinguistic origins of Spanish and evaluate it as a discursively constructed artifact-that is to say, as a language which contains traces of the society in which it is produced, and of the discursive traditions that are often involved and invoked in its creation. This is a comprehensive and provocative new work which takes a fresh look at Spanish from specific political and historical perspectives, combining the traditional chronological organization of linguistic history and spatial categories such as Iberia, Latin America, and the US, whilst simultaneously identifying the limits of these organizational principles. josé del valle is Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. In 2010 he received the Friedrich Wilhelm Emblem of the Tongue and Sword Dos armas son la lengua y el espada Que si las gobernamos cual conviene Anda nuestra persona bien guardada Y mil provechos su buen uso tiene. Pero cualquiera de ellas desmandada Como de la cordura se enagene En el loco y sandio causa muerte Y en el cuerdo y sagaz trueca la suerte "The sword and the tongue are two weapons that, if we handle them as we should, will ensure our security and bring us great advantage. But, if either escapes our control, as if robbed of all good sense, it will bring death to lunatics and fools and ill fortune to the wise and sane." Contents List of contributors page x List of figures and tables xii Acknowledgements xiii Part I Theoretical underpinnings Language, politics and history: an introductory essay 3 josé del valle Part II The making of Spanish: Iberian perspectives Introduction to the making of Spanish: Iberian perspectives 23 alberto medina, josé del valle and henrique monteagudo The prehistory of written Spanish and the thirteenth-century nationalist zeitgeist 31 roger wright Language, nation and empire in early modern Iberia 44 miguel martínez The seventeenth-century debate over the origins of Spanish: links of language ideology to the Morisco question 61 kathryn a. woolard The institutionalization of language in eighteenth-century Spain 77 alberto medina The officialization of Spanish in mid-nineteenth-century Spain: the Academy's authority 93 laura villa vii viii Contents 8 Spanish and other languages of Spain in the Second Republic henrique monteagudo Part III The making of Spanish: Latin American and Transatlantic perspectives 9 Introduction to the making of Spanish: Latin American and Transatlantic perspectives elvira narvaja de arnoux and josé del valle 10 Language, religion and unification in early colonial Peru paul firbas 11 Grammar and the state in the Southern Cone in the nineteenth century elvira narvaja de arnoux 12 The politics of lexicography in the Mexican Academy in the late nineteenth century bárbara cifuentes 13 Language in the Dominican Republic: between Hispanism and Panamericanism juan r. valdez 14 Language diversity and national unity in the history of Uruguay graciela barrios 15 Language debates and the institutionalization of philology in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century guillermo toscano y garcía 16 Linguistic emancipation and the academies of the Spanish language in the twentieth century: the 1951 turning point josé del valle Part IV The making of Spanish: US perspectives 17 Introduction to the making of Spanish: US perspectives josé del valle and ofelia garcía 18 Language, church and state in territorial Arizona elise m. dubord Contents ix 19 The politics of Spanish and English in territorial New Mexico arturo fernández-gibert 20 Public health and the politics of Spanish in early twentieth-century Texas glenn a. martinez 21 Categorizing Latinos in the history of the US Census: the official racialization of Spanish jennifer leeman Part V The making of Spanish beyond Spain and the Americas 22 Introduction to the making of Spanish beyond Spain and the Americas mauro fernández and josé del valle 23 The status of Judeo-Spanish in the Ottoman Empire yvette bürki 24 Language and the hispanization of Equatorial Guinea susana castillo rodríguez 25 The representation of Spanish in the Philippine Islands mauro fernández References Index guillermo toscano y garcía teaches linguistics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) and is co-director of the multi-annual research project "The Formation of School Grammar in Argentina, 1863-1922" (CONICET).

Social Remarks of the History of Spanish

If one takes a birds-eye tour of the social history of the languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Antiquity to the present, there are several key features that can be clearly perceived. Latin, for instance, stands out in this timeline for its role as protagonist during a period of 2000 years. One can also note the importance of linguistic demography, the cycles of which determine the social presence of languages as well as how we view them, since it is these cycles that a¤ect the configuration and extension of the geographic varieties of each language. Linguistically speaking, Spanish history demonstrates the influence that France has had in different times and diverse areas: the importance of Provencal literature, the arrival of European culture by way of the Camino de Santiago and through ecclesiastical reforms, the Medieval re-population movements, or the influence of the French model in linguistic politics of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, what stands out most clearly when considering the mosaic of languages that have come together in the Peninsula over the course of time is the naturalness and normality with which these languages have co-existed on an everyday basis, whether neighboring languages, co-o‰cial languages sharing the same territory, mixed languages, or languages that mutually influence each other. The case of the Basque Territory is particularly representative due to its secular bilingualism, with the co-existence of extremely different languages from Indo-European and other varieties in the Pre- Historic Age, to modern-day Basque and Castilian. We should not lose sight of the fact that it was a bilingual monk who penned what we consider some of the first testimonies of the Basque language. The aim of this article is to present some of the most important moments in the social history of the Spanish language as it relates to its neighboring languages.