Normativity, description and authority in Chilean linguistics: Voces usadas en Chile (1900) by Aníbal Echeverría y Reyes

Abstract

The transition from the 19th to the 20th century is a key moment in the history of linguistics in Chile: a traditional normativist trend met a scientific, descriptivist trend inaugurated by Rudolf Lenz and Friedrich Hanssen in the 1890s. Voces usadas en Chile, by Aníbal Echeverria y Reyes, published in the year 1900, reflects the clash between both trends of linguistic studies. In this work, normative and descriptive aspects coexist, each belonging to different horizons of legitimacy linked to conflicts of idiomatic authority. We show that Echeverría y Reyes, despite having Lenz as one of their models, does not completely abandon the ideology of the standard language, so normativism is prevalent in his work.