Historicization of Chilean Spanish in Nicolás Palacios’ Raza Chilena (1904)

Abstract

An intense ideological debate concerning the future of Spanish in the independent nations took placein latin America during the 19th century. In Chile, most intellectuals (such as Andrés Bello) embraced rationalist ideals, seeking the international unity of Spanish for the benefi t of political interests. Within this frame, a negative attitude towards regional Chilean linguistic features of Spanish prevailed. At the end of this century, however, we fi nd a sole case which opposes the current dominant view: Nicolás Palacios’ Raza Chilena (1904). Palacios, infl uenced by the racial thinking of Social Darwinists, shows a positive attitude towards Chilean Spanish. He considers it as an authentic manifestation of the soul of the Chilean race. Palacios uses different language ideological processes, such as iconization and erasure. Notwithstanding, the main ideological process used by Palacios is historicization. Within the frame of ethnolinguistic nationalism, Palacios re-tells the history of the Spanish language in a revisionist manner, in order to legitimize popular Chilean Spanish.