Panorama general para el estudio de las actitudes lingüísticas ante la ortografía en los espacios de opinión pública de América y España en los siglos XVIII y XIX

Abstract

Abstract In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Spanish language underwent, from the point of view of the written standard, a series of changes that resolved the prevailing graphic chaos of the preceding centuries. This had been caused by continuous phonological adjustments. The creation of the Spanish Royal Academy (1713), as well as subsequent lexicographical and grammatical works, gradually standardised the orthography of those who used writing as a means to express thought. The objective of this article is to gather together a set of opinions of ordinary people present in the most important spaces of public opinion during the two centuries in question, in order to be able to determine in this way what influence was exerted by the academic body on this process of graphic normalisation and what impact their rules may have had on the different means of written dissemination: publishers, press and handwritten writing. From the methodological point of view, different discursive traditions are identified in order to observe the limits and scope in the acceptance or rejection of these new norms, and therefore to reach conclusions concerning different linguistic attitudes to the graphic system. The diverse opinions of grammarians, writers and non-specialists examined in this study may help to guide different approaches to possible linguistic change in graphic expression.