Language, a political and historical battleground

"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought," said Orwell. And this seems to be the more or less invisible axis that crosses the Congress of the Córdoba Language, a forum that comes back to debate literary and lexicographical issues, but which also comes to denounce implicitly or explicitly threats that hover over the use political, nothing naive, verbal territory at the time of social networks, sense bubbles and ideological polarizations.

Historically, arguments have been even more dangerous than bullets, even preceded.

These arguments created fascism and Stalinism and served as an excuse for their crimes and humiliations. His resistance was also mainly argumentative, because the words are sometimes poisonous and sometimes the necessary antidote.

But before, the arguments were the heritage of politicians, intellectuals and journalists; Today, citizens, activists, operators and even robots have been added to the great "conversation". This phenomenon has broadened democracy, but it has also multiplied anger, simplifications, psychological campaigns and binary populisms. Language is more than ever a battlefield and we observe a real "war of words". To give a quick example, and without going to the bottom of things, the Argentineans who fight against the legalization of abortion have managed to call themselves "pro-life", implying tacitly to say that their opponents are "promoted". Cultural struggles compete for language and aim, for better or for worse, to overcome and create a new thematic common sense. Journalism is ambushed by these intentional appointments and by some laziness conveyed by digital culture: when grammatical or spelling error is tolerable, the journalistic error also ends up being, from discredit the media and cheer the demagogues and "afterlife" propagators.

The other discussions that go through this congress are no less political. Some areas of the motherland have publicly insinuated that "inclusive language" should be adopted as an official language by the RAE. This language, which is a symptom of one of the great and good news of the West (equality of the bades), can not be included in a dictionary until it has been mbadified and manifested perennially. "Todes" will enter the dictionaries the day the street devotes it, since the words are inscribed from the bottom up, and not the reverse. The dictionary is a record, not a doctrine, for the best intentions it has.

The third political meeting is the Cordoba meeting. And it is common that Spain represents linguistic imperialism and that behind this movement is the intention to make this vast region a hypothetical captive and enslaved market. For a while, all the Latin American academies have joined the RAE to defend the differences and collaborate in the diversity of the different Spaniards. But for a progressive, transnational and retrograde nationalism, any institution is neoliberal and cipaya: "emancipatory" emotion and paranoia always pay well. And this Congress was no stranger to this puerile and trivial vision. That's basically, Vargas Llosa's answer to López Obrador's request: King Felipe must ask for forgiveness. Mario explains the contradiction afflicting all the nations where, despite the independence of the Spanish crown, persist and persist "so many millions of marginalized, poor, ignorant and exploited Indians". He also spoke of the mbadacres of Indians during these two centuries of autonomy, not forgetting to mention that the Mexican Empire had made mbadive human sacrifices and exerted a cruelty no less intense than that of the Indians. inexcusable winners. A few days ago, Pérez-Reverte had had more strength with López Obrador: "If he believes what he says, he is fool, he does not believe that he is a scoundrel." Politics, journalism, controversy, history. Today more than ever everything, absolutely everything is language.