The 1700 Crisis/Revolution in the History of Spanish Language: The Change of Paradigm in the Weltansichten and the Old and the New in the Diccionario de Autoridades

Abstract

The history of language does not follow the stages of general history. Those changes are difficult to specify (we call that periodization in language history) and in addition we need to introduce transitional changes of varying length. The transition between Baroque’s classical Spanish to Enlightenment’s modern Spanish is marked by a purification of the literary models, corpus selection, the establishment of the normative authority of the Real Academia Española, and the recognition of American varieties of Spanish. It is a true change of Weltansichten, or worldview. In the lexicon, this change of paradigm incarnates itself in the elaboration of the first publication of the Real Academia: the Diccionario de Autoridades, in six volumes issued between 1726 and 1739.

The central years of this process encompass the change of dynasty and the Peninsular War, and the transition, in whole, opposes two sides that could be reduced to the positions of austracistas and borbónicos, traditionalists and liberals, defenders of the rights of the periphery and centralists, supporters of regional variety and of unification, upholders of the Baroque and of the Enlightenment…; thus, this period can be characterized as a «Spanish Revolution» that would coincide in dates and in opposing parties other changes of paradigm such as those of the «English Revolution».