The transition from domestic to academic orthography in a corpus of chilean political pamphlets (1880–1939)

Abstract

This article aims at contributing to the documentation of the transition from the spelling system known as ortografía chilena (‘Chilean orthography’) or ortografía casera (‘domestic orthography’) to that of the Royal Spanish Academy in Chile by studying the collection of political pamphlets made available to the public digitally by the Library of the National Congress of Chile. The analysis of 35 pamphlets printed between 1880 and 1939 shows a progressive adoption of the academic model, which by 1910 already seemed widely predominant. Thus, the possibility is raised that the 1927 decree establishing the adoption of the academic orthography was but the official reaffirmation of a tendency noticeable in the country since almost two decades before, at least as far as the genre under study is concerned.