Implicit and explicit linguistic attitudes in the epistolary discursive tradition of America and Spain (18th and 19th centuries)

Abstract

If, for the discipline of history, the analysis of the correspondence between different types of interlocutors has proven to be extraordinarily productive in the recovery of information about social manners and customs, and a people’s sociocultural environment, these documents are equally useful for philology. In addition to providing details of how they were composed, they reveal linguistic atti- tudes that are highly important for the study of linguistic change. This paper discusses the need to use the concept of «discursive traditions», through a review of a broad corpus of letters from the 18th and 19th centuries in America and Spain, in order to draw coherent conclusions regarding the direct or indirect assessments of the language made by speakers from these centuries. They are highly relevant for the study of the reflection of orality in writing, the evolution of spelling and for the appropriate approach to the characterization of the different changes affecting ways of writing Spanish.