“If others speak the Spanish language / I speak the language I want.” With these two short assonant verses ends “The High School Student” – Mariano de Cavia’s pseudonym – one of the chronicles he published, between 1908 and 1917, in the newspaper The impartial under the general title of “Clean and Repaired”. In this, as in many others, he criticizes the “galicursis”, the “galicongrios” or the “galiparlantes” – Don Mariano did not spare – who prefer to use Basket either comfort respectively to “flower basket” or “comfort”.
Like almost all purist columnists (the majority), Mariano de Cavia is right in many of his criticisms of fashionable foreignisms, as in the case of Basketbut he is almost as wrong in censoring words that, sooner or later, will become part of the lexical heritage of Spanish. This is the case of Anglicism comfortfor example, already collected by Zerolo in 1895 and which the Academy will include in the Supplement at the fifteenth edition, in 1927.
Although it was Antonio de Valbuena who, with his “Fe de errata al Nuevo Diccionario de la Academia”, in 1884 – also in Impartiality—, inaugurated what we call today the linguistic chronicle, it was Mariano de Cavia who gave it shape and gave it the character that many others — and few others — behind him would shape and consolidate. Writers, academics, linguists, journalists, art lovers participated, in short, people who, for one reason or another — more or less linguistic or ideological — felt the need to position themselves in relation to language and, above all, had the opportunity to do so.
The XX begins with Mariano de Cavia and Julio Casares and continues without interruption until today with chroniclers such as Ramón Carnicer, Fernando Lázaro Carreter, Luis Calvo (el Brocense), Emilio Lorenzo, Manuel Seco, José María Vaz de Soto, Fabián González Bachiller and J. Javier Mangado Martínez, Luis Cortés, El Marqués de Tamarón, Amando de Miguel, Luís Magrinyà, Gregorio Salvador, Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, Álex Grijelmo, Humberto Hernández, Francisco Ríos Álvarez, Juan José Morcillo, Antonio Narbona , María Méndez, Elena Álvarez Mellado, Magi Camps, Lola Pons and Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, the last ten of whom are active today.
In total, 37 columnists – to our knowledge – who have signed around 6,600 columns on the language published in 16 national and regional newspapers, both in paper and digital format (source: METAPRES corpus).
Halfway between opinion and dissemination, chronicles on language are texts that deal with language, published in the press and that constitute the free expression of an individual who, periodically, expresses his opinions on the use made of it by his contemporaries. They can be identified as specialized texts, to the extent that they have a fixed subject and a more or less specialized author; personal, since the disposition of the signatory and his intention to entertain, disseminate or prescribe are essential; interpretative-critical, since they suppose a position on language and society; and with pragmatic-discursive characteristics that show different degrees of oralization and dialogicity.
The peculiarity of linguistic chronicles is that the metalinguistic reflection they encourage occurs in the public space of the media. Occupying this space means placing the object of the debate, the language, in the sphere of public opinion, which makes the signatory a kind of authority, a reference for making judgments about the language, and this is independent of his real expertise in the language or simple lover of words.
The columnist, owner of an opinion space, must take a position on specific linguistic facts: neologisms, foreign words, variation, authority, linguistic sexism, linguistic contact, spelling norms… These, sometimes, will be motivated by current events. – a poster in a City Hall: “Transportation is not a spelling mistake” motivates an article by Lola Pons—; others, for their own interests: “And what shall we say now about the pronoun “realize”? It is a common and shameless use among the pubescent canephora of Quintana Roo”, bellows Luis Calvo, the Brocense -; and, on several occasions, at the request of his readers: “A lady complained publicly, a few days ago, while she was walking down one of the streets under construction in our capital, about the detours she had to make to make her purchase”, they say. begins a column Gónzález and Mangado—.
In any case, the immediacy of the issues they address and the different positions taken – more or less purist, belligerent, ironic, rigorous – directly link the chronicles on language to the context in which they are produced, making them a living thermometer of the way in which the Spanish language has been perceived through the different stages.
Speaking is not, as we know, a neutral activity, nor is thinking about how one speaks in a space of information dissemination. The recurring ideologemes within the CSL are purism, nationalism, standardization, perfect language, among others. In any case, these are positions that generally go beyond the strictly linguistic to end up playing a role of legitimation, especially in periods of strong social changes, such as during the dictatorship or in the transition or not in a certain order.
There is no single profile that defines the language columnist, but, if we exclude the professors/linguists of the 21st century – Luis Cortés, Humberto Hernández, Álvarez de Miranda -, some others who use a moderate tone – Magi Camps, Francisco Ríos, Ramón Carnicer, Manuel Rabanal – and the female columnists – Lola Pons, María Méndez and Elena Álvarez Mellado, deliberately removed from normative rigor -, most of them would agree with what has been defined as language guardians.
They are individuals who collect the concerns of ordinary people about the uses of language and who construct a ethos very identifiable discursive: belligerent, ironic, purist, who frequently resorts to etymology and quotes from the classics, enemy of certain groups of speakers (politicians, journalists, popular figures…), with a legion of followers with whom he interacts, devoted to the Academy, strong argumentative, cultured and read. “Experts”, “language madmen” determined, in most cases, to immobilize what cannot be immobilized, to try to stop what can only be changed: the language, the speakers.
The value of the linguistic chronicle lies, among other things, in presenting what has mattered, what has been relevant at different times for the Spanish-speaking linguistic community, and in showing how the problems have been approached and from where they have been taken. position. In short, the chronicles on the language inform us about the issues, the actors and the contexts related to linguistic use and norms, they talk about speaking, and we, the speakers, like few things more.
