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Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature

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‘Because When Governments Speak, They Are Not Always Right’: National Construction And Orthographic Conflicts In Mid-Nineteenth Century Spain, Laura Villa Jan 2012

‘Because When Governments Speak, They Are Not Always Right’: National Construction And Orthographic Conflicts In Mid-Nineteenth Century Spain, Laura Villa

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper analyzes the polemics surrounding the discursive legitimation and political institutionalization of different spelling systems circulating in mid-nineteenth-century Spain. In 1843, teachers associated with Madrid's Literary and Scientific Academy of Primary Education developed a simplified orthography and began to implement it in schools. In response to this independent initiative, Queen Isabel II signed a Royal Decree in 1844 that mandated the exclusive use of Royal Spanish Academy's orthography in Spain's primary education. The Literary and Scientific Academy contested the imposition and took actions to oppose its implementation, by organizing meetings and publishing essays to defend both the simplified orthography …


La Disputada Autoridad De Las Academias: Debate Lingüístico-Ideológico En Torno A La Ortografía De 2010, José Del Valle, Laura Villa Jan 2012

La Disputada Autoridad De Las Academias: Debate Lingüístico-Ideológico En Torno A La Ortografía De 2010, José Del Valle, Laura Villa

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article we analyze the language ideological debate that surrounded the publication of the new edition of the Ortografía of the Royal Spanish Academy, published in 2010. We examine this debate with the concept of "higiene verbal" and focusing on the current language policies to maintain the control of the symbolic status of the language. The analysis reveals some tensions that have been usually concealed in Spain's linguistic historiography in favor of an aseptic narrative of a cordial management of the language and its norms by all the academies of the language.