Del Valle, Jose and Luis Gabriel Stheeman (eds.) (2002): The Battle over Spanish between 1800 and 2000: Language Ideologies and Hispanic Intellectuals, Routledge.
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-2210.html
Angela Bartens, University of Helsinki.
INTRODUCTION
As the title reveals, the volume under survey discusses the language ideologies of Hispanic intellectuals during the 19th and 20th centuries. More accurately, the relatively great continuity in Hispanic language ideology is portrayed through detailed case studies of the writings of those Hispanic intellectuals who most actively have participated in the language debate over the past 200 years.
SYNOPSIS
In the introductory chapter, ''Nationalism, hispanismo, and monoglossic culture'' [pp. 1-13], the editors Jose del Valle and Luis Gabriel-Stheeman present the historical frame for the following discussions: The independence of the Latin American Republics in the 1820es sets the scene for different initiatives of cultural diplomacy. At the time, the romantic Volksgeist is embodied by language. In the Spanish-speaking world, this leads to the genesis of the idea of a (pan-)hispanismo, a monoglossic ideology with an inbuilt hierarchy which places Spain in the leading position. A new phase sets in during the 1880es when nationalism acquires more strongly ethnic and linguistic connotations. Above all the Desastre of 1898 (loss of the last Spanish colonies) transforms the language issue into a language battle: the political empire lost is to be rebuilt on cultural terms.
In ''Linguistic anti-academism and Hispanic community: Sarmiento and Unamuno'' [pp. 14-41], Barry L. Velleman shows how quite similar basic assumptions have been interpreted in different ways by the Hispanic intellectuals who have participated in the language ideology debate. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an Argentinean educator whose main linguistic activity dates from the early 1840es in Chile (from 1868-1874, he was President of Argentina) while Miguel de Unamuno was a Spanish poet, novelist and essayist who became involved in the language debate half a century later. Not only did Unamuno call Sarmiento his favorite Spanish [sic] writer of the 19th century [p. 25], these spiritual twins, as Velleman calls them [p. 25], both believed that social regeneration and linguistic revolution go hand in hand and were critical of the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE). Nevertheless, while Sarmiento considered that Spanish was the language of a decadent culture not suitable for the modern American nations -- this led him inter alia to propose an orthography in 1842 - Unamuno believed in the existence of a spiritual basis among the Spanish-speaking nations which would help preserve the uniformity of the language.
In his contribution, Belford More tackles ''The ideological construction of an empirical base: Selection and elaboration in Andrès Bello's grammar''[pp. 42-63]. Bello wrote his famous Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos (1847) in order to preserve and to produce unity. As More demonstrates, this milestone of Spanish language planning was nevertheless an undertaking with a strictly personal dimension -- as any grammar inevitably is [p. 60]. Considering that ''... one of the main objectives of language policy [is] the preservation of certain identifying cultural patterns, whose survival is considered essential for the cultural and historical survival of the community'' [p. 58], Bello opts for the creation of historical unity by including historical texts in a grammar which essentially aims at reflecting the current use of the educated, more precisely, the current use of educated Spaniards. As More points out, the hierarchical character of the hispanismo is maintained (even) by Bello.
In ''Historical linguistics and cultural history: The polemic between Rufino Jose Cuervo and Juan Valera'' [pp. 64-77], Jose del Valle traces the history of the polemic between the Colombian philologist and the Spanish politician and man of letters which started when Cuervo wrote a preface to Francisco Soto y Calvo's narrative poem Nastasio in 1899 and which lasted until 1903. It is important to bear in mind that Cuervo had reached the second pahse of his linguistic thought. While his writings of the time have been accused of senility, a fear of the fragmentation of the Spanish language is present throughout his oeuvre. However, a loss of faith in the desire of the Spanish-speaking nations to reach and maintain a consensus over an educated norm made him consider linguistic fragmentation an inevitability during the second phase of his linguistic oeuvre. Valera, a founding member of the hispanismo movement, held quite a different notion of hispanindad in which language, thought, and nation are equalled, however with a latent hierarchical order biased towards Spain. By consequence, he strongly believed in the purity and the indivisibility of the Spanish language.
In ''Menendez Pidal, national regeneration and the linguistic utopia'' [pp. 78-105], the same author shows that Pidal's entire philological and linguistic oeuvre can be read as a response to the crisis of 1898, its main goal being defined as ''constructing a modern Hispanic community in which Spain's leadership would be recognized'' [p. 79]. Here, too, language is equalled with culture and nation. Again, the linguistic elite of Castile plays the key part: ''the inherently superior qualities of the dialect of Castile explained its projection not only in time but also in space'' [p. 99].
Unamuno constitutes the topic of a second article by Joan Ramon Resina: ''For their own good: The Spanish identity and its Great Inquisitor, Miguel de Unamuno'' [pp. 106-133]. Since the contribution is devoted exclusively to Unamuno, the author draws a very detailed portrait of this man whose ''Castilianization ... made him a zealot'' [p. 112]. It is probably not very widely known or diffused that this Spanish writer who turned Spanish nationalism into a religion [p. 115] as a young man not only supported some kind of autonomy for the Basque people but that he unsuccessfully vied for a position in Basque linguistics (or language?) at a high school, something which may have contributed to his militant position against the other languages of Spain. Unamuno was particularly explicit about the idea that at least some of the losses of the political empire should be retrieved through symbolic self-assertion through language by means of the founding of a language empire. For him, language constituted the continuation of war by other means [pp. 121-122].
Luis Gabriel-Stheeman has noted the parallelism in the terminologies used by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset and present-day linguist Deborah Cameron: ''A nobleman grabs the broom: Ortega y Gasset's verbal hygiene'' [134-166]. Ortega y Gasset placed the safeguarding of the Spanish language, a patriotic mission according to him, in the hands of the Spanish educated elite, thus perpetuating hierarchical thinking within the hispanismo movement.
John C. Landreau introduces us to a less well known Hispic intellectual who participated in the language debate: ''Jose Maria Arguedas: Peruvian Spanish as subversive assimilation'' [pp. 167-192]. This is a most welcome addition to the figures previously discussed. Although Arguedas saw Spanish as a means of promoting the Indian majority of Peru, he argued for the legitimization of an autochthonous, mainly Quechua-influenced, hybrid variety of Spanish which would constitute a language of modernity, progress, and equality for all Peruvians inter alia by retaining the mythological power the Quechua language is believed to have and by expressing Andean cultural values and concepts. In short, his conception of Peruvian Spanish is ''an enactment in miniature of the ideal national community that he envisions'' [p. 185]. - It would have been interesting to learn about the reception of his ideas outside Peru.
In the concluding chapter, ''Codo con codo: Hispanic Community and the language spectacle'' [pp. 193-216], the editors of the volume tie the threads together: During the past 200 years, different kinds of community building projects (first the national independences, most recently the construction of a supranational Hispanic community) have always been intertwined with language ideologies which show surprising consistency over the whole time period considered. It has been pointed out above that sometimes quite different conclusions were reached by Hispanic intellectuals formulating language ideology in spite of highly similar basic assumptions, nevertheless, ''They all assumed that peaceful coexistence within communities is possible inasmuch as they possess a stable and minimally variable system, and that this system must be known and accepted by those who belong or wish to belong.'' [p. 193]. Since Valera, Unamuno, Pidal and Ortega, there is also a tradition of language conflict and of condemning nationalists' demands for the promotion of their regional languages as destructive [p. 194, 195]. The third point these intellectuals seem to agree on is that the leading role in the standardization of the Spanish language has to be assumed by the Spanish (intellectual) elites. Leading philologists of the present day and recent past such as Manuel Alvar and Rafael Lapesa have advocated this stance, cf.
México sabía mejor que nadie el valor de tener una lengua que unifique y que libere de la miseria y del atraso a las comunidades indígenas. ... Salvar al indio, redimir al indio, incorporaciòn del indio, como entonces gritaban, no es otra cosa que deindianizar al indio. Incorporarlo a la idea de un estado moderno, para su utilizaciòn en unas empresas de solidaridad nacional y para que reciba los beneficios de esa misma sociedad. ... El camino hacia la libertad transita por la hispanizaciòn. (Alvar 1991:17-18 quoted on pp. 207-208)
The authors demonstrate that at present, such entities as the RAE and the Instituto Cervantes, backed by the Spanish Crown and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as multinational corporations wage the language war above all on three fronts: in the World Wide Web, in the United States, and in Brazil. Dissident voices such as Gabriel García Marquez' orthography proposal and defenders of so-called Spanglish - or the use of English loanwords per se (cf., e.g., Varela 2000) - are discredited in public while the 1999 orthography of the RAE was celebrated as a milestone of linguistic integration in the Hispanic world while virtually nothing was changed vis-a-vis the previous edition of the orthography. The authors are convinced that it is all about big money and the economic reconquista of Latin America.
Besides the articles discussed above, the volume contains a table of contents [pp. v-vii], a list of the contributors [p. viii], biographical notes on the intellectuals discussed in the contributions [pp. ix-xi], a short preface [pp. xii-xiii], acknowledgements [p. xiv], references [pp. 217-230], and an index [pp. 231-237].
CRITICAL EVALUATION
The point made by the authors is certainly valid. Since Nebrija we know that ''Siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio.''. Depicting the construction of a language ideology such as the monoglossic and (Pan-)Hispanic one is an important descriptive task of the Historiography of Linguistics. But are the Spanish entities mentioned so much worse than, e.g., the French language planning institutions? Is there anything new under the sun, anyway? Doesn't it seem interesting that all of the contributors but one are affiliated to universities located in the U.S.? And: Does calling the director of the RAE, Victor Garcia de la Concha, ''don Victor'' [e.g., p. 211], whatever the degree of language imperialism contained in his public statements, lend more credibility to the cause of the present volume?
This does by no means imply that I do not applaud the publication of the volume under survey. Rather, I cannot help but agree with the editors in their synopsis of the contributions which shed light in a significant way on the intellectuals involved in the Hispanic language debate and their specific stances. The hierarchical thinking of the formulators of Hispanic language ideology has been adopted by speakers all over the Hispanic world, not just by purist langauge teachers. This is yet another reason for wanting to take a look at the emergence of the ideology in question. I will most certainly make my students of an on-going course on American Spanish I managed to baffle a few weeks ago with the very quote del Valle and Gabriel-Stheeman take from Alvar 1991 (see above) read this book. You should urge your students to do so, too, or, if you are not teaching any related course, read it yourself -- last but not least for the sake of general culture.
REFERENCES
Alvar, Manuel (ed., 1991): Manual de dialectología hispánica. El espaíol de América. Barcelona: Ariel.
Varela, Beatriz (2000): ''El español cubanoamericano''. In: Ana Roca (ed.) Research on Spanish in the United States: linguistic issues and challenges. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 173-176.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr.phil. Angela Bartens is Acting chair of Iberoromance Philology at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests include language contact including pidgins and creoles, sociolinguistics and applied sociolinguistics including language policy and language planning. |