Normalizar, Preservar, civilizar: la política linguística en la obra gramatical de Andrés Bello

Abstract

This paper examines the linguistic policy of Andres Bello, framed in the ideological construction of Hispano-America. This intellectual policy is detected in the Grammar of the Castilian language for the use of Spanish-Americans and in the Principles of orthology and metrics of the Spanish language, in whose two contents they develop decisive questions about the knowledge of the language, articulated as rules that aspire to govern the linguistic practice of citizens. That is, lines that offers a response to the requirements of the political exercise on linguistic work. A political action that allows American countries, by studying, achieve a grammatical possession of the Castilian language. Bello perceives the heterogeneity of the indigenous languages and the dialectal variation of the Spanish language in America, but this variety is seen as a challenge to a homogeneity that aspires to establish. This “grammaticalization” of the language is intended to suppress the uses of Castilian in the colony and the linguistic codes of pre-Hispanic times. The political action with the language would consist of regulating the language by means of grammar; to discipline the linguistic praxis and to invest the social subjects with ways of thinking and feeling. And, such subjects enter into domain networks.