Unit 5

Verbal hygiene is a broad term, and it involves the interference in language matters, by suggesting ways to clean it and improve it, trying to regulate and control it. An example of verbal hygiene is women being told, at a point in history, not to raise their voice, to use sweet words to sound feminine, to never sound assertive, etc. Prescriptivism has to do with the ideologies and practices of stating explicitly the correct and incorrect uses of language that are externally imposed. RAE used to be prescriptivist, but now it shows a moderate prescriptivism, by saying they collect what is consolidated by the use and then proposing the most advisable options when speakers are hesitant, and this is done in order to maintain their legitimacy and authority.

Del Valle argues that once we denaturalize RAE´s hegemony and see that it is a discoursive community, we can fight for the creation of an institution that is indeed a public sphere where diverse conflicting ideological views participate democratically in decision-making. A counter hegemonic discourse to RAE´s is needed.

It is a proxy organization which serves economic and political goals of certain groups, such as the government, the crown, as they can make a lot of money by selling dictionaries, for example. The goal of RAE is not with linguistic purity, but to retain economic and politcal power. RAE is an instance of corpus planning.

a. RAE projects an image of a legitimate democracy based on an open and rational debate; an image for itself as a modern, democratic institution.
b. How: by claiming that the norms emerges from the people; by using the network to communicate with speakers; by justifies their existance because of public demand.
c. In this supposed convergence of everybody in an open dialogue, the RAE hopes it will certify them as a democratic institution and, consequently, grant it legitimacy and authority.

The design anf implementation of "política linguística panhispánica" in which all hispanic nations converge in equal terms, and by embracing the rhetorical of diversity of language (to achieve cultural and linguistic unity)

RAE has been historically criticized for being Eurocentric, therefore, a polycentric norm, which is one created by the WHOLE panhispanic community and not only by Spain, will contribute to the democratic image RAE projects

a. RAE is a discursive communitity because they are a group of individuals and institutions that converge in common metalinguistic practices and produce a coordinated discourse that aims at controlling the Spanish language.
b. By projecting the image of a public sphere, RAE can become hegemonic and dominant, therefore, RAE naturalizes their system of beliefs by presenting them not as a discursive community, but as a public sphere where everyone can participate democratically. Hegemony is a form of domination based not on coersion but on the control and naturalization of a system of beliefs.

No, academies do not feel that dialectical variation threatens the unity of Spanish and therefore they can celebrate ir while they embrace intralinguistic diversity. They are aware that radical prescriptivism and the search for homogeneity could be damaging to the open-minded and democratic image they try to project.
b. The authority of RAE can be threated by something social: alternative views to language, and by something polital: language planning

through the promotion of Pan-Hispanic norms/policy of Pan-Hispanism that recognize some regional variation

While the standard language ideology denigrates the language varieties associated with disfavored groups, this rejection of social variation sometimes co exist with an acceptance of geographic variation, which is reflected in descriptions of Spanish as a pluricentric language. Pluricentrism means that instead of a single, international standard, each spanish speaking country has its own standard variety; however, this recognition of multiple standard varieties does not challenge the denigration towards non-standard varieties, in fact, it reproduces the hierarchies among social varieties (although pluricentrism implies "equality" among geographic varieties). Pluricentrism goes hand in hand with the standard lang. ideology and the naturalizing og the privileging of the educated elites. RAE exerts influence in shaping the norms of the member academies around the panhispanic community.