Representaciones ideológicas de la lengua, la conversación y la comunicación en manuales de urbanidad del siglo XIX en México: guías para la civilización, el orden y el progreso nacional

Author

Luis B. Quesada Nieto, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

2-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Advisor

José del Valle

Committee Members

Beatriz Lado

Cecelia Cutler

Subject Categories

Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics | Language and Literacy Education | Latin American Languages and Societies | Linguistic Anthropology | Other Arts and Humanities | Other Linguistics | Spanish Linguistics

Keywords

Language normativity, glottopolitics, representation, language ideologies, pragmatics, etiquette manuals

Abstract

This study explores the main ideological representations of language, language use, conversation and communication found in a set of five etiquette manuals that were published and used in Mexico during the 19^th century. Following a glottopolitical perspective for the study of normativity, language policies, and sociolinguistic practices, the main hypothesis developed establishes that the ideas about language contained in these texts are strongly connected with the social, political, and economic period in which they are elaborated and enunciated, that is, the moment in which the nation is still defining itself, struggling to consolidate its viability and its value facing the international order after winning Independence from Spain. More than a simple correlation, these ideas are a clear expression of the socio-political order. This dissertation also offers a review of the positivist approach to social ideas about language, as developed within the linguistic disciplines, namely pragmatics, sociopragmatics, historical pragmatics, and historical (im)politeness, since they have studied similar phenomena by using descriptive labels such as (im)politeness, face threatening acts, intensifiers and mitigation markers and strategies, for the most part without fully reflecting on the broader social and political processes behind the instances of language named by this and other labels. It is in sight of this problem that this study proposes an alternative reading of the corpus, while retrieving and analyzing from the etiquette manuals the content produced by a small group of privileged authors trying to imitate the European values associated to civilization and progress. This work, thus, extracts those ideas that circulated, and somehow still circulate, in the Mexican public sphere, to organize them and interpret them critically.

Recommended Citation

Quesada Nieto, Luis B., "Representaciones ideológicas de la lengua, la conversación y la comunicación en manuales de urbanidad del siglo XIX en México: guías para la civilización, el orden y el progreso nacional" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5612