Forging a “civil discourse”

Abstract

Abstract The academic and, subsequently, social legitimation of Basque studies – namely, their constitution as a subject of scholarly inquiry in the early twentieth century – is proposed as a key factor in the early process of standardisation of the Basque language: this legitimation created a climate that was propitious to the development of civil discourse and favourable to the pursuit of consensus regarding the construction of a literary standard. In its support, I evidence the breadth and strength of the involved actors’ ideology, as well as the influence of civil discourse and the spirit of consensus upon the three phases that characterised Basque standardisation: (1) the ideological polarisation that led to consensual failure around 1901; (2) the ideological depolarisation that culminated in the foundation of the Academy of the Basque Language in 1918; and (3) the ideological repolarisation that caused the breakdown of civil discourse during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923–1930). Its standardisation was closely linked to the promotion of the journal Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos and the use of scientific-inductive method in modern Bascology. Oddly, historians and linguists have almost completely ignored the influence of the legitimation of an area study (linked to a particular language) on that language’s standardisation.