Spanish-Guarani diglossia in colonial Paraguay: A language undertaking

Abstract

: The colonial relationship during which the Guarani were reduced by the Jesuits – a religious venture that touched the deepest foundations of the Amerin-dian culture – led to a situation of diglossia. By reducing the Guarani language to writing, grammars, catechisms and sermons, the Jesuits orchestrated a standardization which would also serve them as a tool of manipulation. Guarani was not marginalized, let alone replaced by Spanish; Guarani was absorbed, and therefore altered. The preservation of the native language by the missionaries appears to have facilitated the religious conversion. The present chapter studies the diglossic relationship in which Guarani suffers a reorientation of some lexical semantic fields; focusing on the domain of religious language.