Borges and the Politics of Language in the 1920s

Abstract

In “El idioma infinito,” one of Jorge Luis Borges’s many essays regarding language in the 1920s, the author calls for a “politics of language” intended for the Spanish of the River Plate. Forming part of the Argentine literary avant-garde, he is keenly interested in the development of language and, more importantly, who is to maintain it. Are the literati to allow a natural development of language and produce texts and analyses that mirror its transformation, or are they to intervene and prescribe how a language ought to be used? By studying Borges’s positions on spelling and vocabulary, the present analysis notes that his “politics of language” in the 1920s promotes a descriptive and natural development of Spanish, more akin to the laissez-faire approach adopted by intellectuals of English than the Spanish of the regulatory Real Academia Española.