Don't touch my language: attitudes toward institutional language reforms

Abstract

This paper examines language users' attitudes toward language reforms proposed by the Real Academia Española (RAE) (Spanish Royal Academy) in 2010 by analyzing readers' comments posted online in response to an article by El País, the major newspaper in Spain, which presented those reforms. This project combines the theoretical notion of argumentation schemes by Fairclough and Fairclough [2012. Political discourse analysis: A method for advanced students. London: Routledge] and Systemic Functional Linguistics, in particular the Transitive Model [Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold, p. 282] to observe how those argumentation schemes are linguistically constructed and to connect linguistic forms, discourse practices, and social processes. This study classifies readers' comments/reactions considering rejection and acceptance of the changes and the most common argumentation schemes (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012, p. 23) displayed for each position. The majority of the arguments fall into four general categories against the proposed orthographic and spelling changes: (1) deterioration of the language, (2) RAE's failure to fulfill its duties, (3) language users' proprietary rights, and (4) rationality (logic) or two main categories in favor: (1) respect for the institution RAE and (2) rationality (logic). This classification explores issues related to language attitudes, language and senses of belonging, language and identity, and language and ideology, revealing ways in which members of a speech community express their ties and relationship with the language they speak.