Cartas privadas y actitudes lingüísticas en España y América durante los siglos XVIII y XIX. Algunos problemas en el modo de acceso al objeto de estudio

Abstract

Together with an oral manifestation put into practice by tradition since birth, necessity drove ordinary people to develop the ability to speak with an absence of the self, the you and the communicative situation. Initially, it was the emigration to America, promoted by the miseries of a decadent homeland, which contributed to the development of a textual genre of urgency, without literary retensions, which in later years became a sign of good education on the part of those using it. With this work, we review the methodological pitfalls that are hidden when accessing this type of object. We analyse the difficulties that might be found by researchers when facing these documents from a philological point of view and from the sociolinguistic view of the attitudes of the speakers—both implicit and explicit. The concept of “discursive tradition” will act as a methodological moderator and will allow the construction of a bridge between diachronic Sociolinguistics and Language History in the recovery of oral remains from the speech of the 18th and 19th centuries in Spain and America.