Language Congress: all ways to rethink language – 26/03/2019

Córdoba Special Envoy.

The moment has arrived. The VIII International Congress of the Spanish Language opens tomorrow in the city of Córdoba. Argentina is the first country to receive it second time, after the 2004 appointment to Rosario – and the memorable speech of Roberto Fontanarrosa, in which he quipped on the place that bad words should occupy. The meeting will be much more than just a formal dialogue on the history of language and the dilemmas of grammar. Because contemporary debates (and dreams) are also expressed through a language and its categories. How much does each person say which words he chooses to pronounce and which ones he excludes? Is there a position to stick to the most academic rules or to try to manage their borders creatively, as the great novelists did? What are the tensions and the meeting points of a language so rich and sister of so many countries? These questions will be discussed, but they are not the only ones.

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The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, pointed out these previous days that one of the congress currencies, America and the future of Spanishit will be a main objective. The language develops and is transformed from the large number of Spanish speakers, who add their particular uses. Perhaps also an axis of the dialogues will be if today there is a normative axis of the Spanish or if its different regions acquire more and more autonomy by intervening.

But a language spoken by 572 million people worldwide This implies, in addition to close cultural links, a common space of exchange, not just ideas. Is there an opportunity that is still not being exploited? In this context, reference will also be made to the science produced and published in Spanish, the means of strengthening it and the links that can be used in the field of economic development.

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The opening, this Wednesday at 10 am, will be official and will have many performers. It will be the King of Spain Felipe VI, President Mauricio Macri, the novelist and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, the Spanish author (who writes in Catalan and Castilian) Carmen Riera and the Argentine writer and translator Santiago Kovadloff, as well as García Moreno and the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado.

A little later, the inaugural speech of the Brazilian writer Nélida Piñón (granddaughter of Galician) who, under the title Spanish, universal language will study the links between language, the American continent, Spain and Portugal.

The menu will be varied. They arrive more 250 specialists from different continents and representatives of 23 language academies. Among the remarkable feathers, the Nicaraguan award Cervantes, Sergio Ramírez, will evoke the mixture of the language in Latin America, the writer and Mexican politician Paco Ignacio Taibo II, who will make a panel on Language and interculturality– and cult characters such as singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina and the Spanish poet who dazzles young people, Elvira Sastre. In addition, as part of the official program, the conference will be presented Poetry of the languages ​​of the origin and there will be a place to rethink the challenges offered by digital language, which expands with the immediacy of electronics. What do we do with emoticons?

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The Congress will also be useful for rethinking the sometimes deliberately confusing uses that can be made of words. A good point at a time when the spread of false news and we receive mesmerizing messages from advertising screens. A few days ago, the Spanish writer and journalist Alex Grijelmo, specializing in the use of Spanish, pointed out in an interview with NOT: "We need the courtesy to maintain civilized relationships and minimize aggression, including language", but he also warned that "something very different, it is d & # 39; use euphemisms, attenuations or manipulations "to conceal meanings. the theme will be at the center of the table Political correction and language, which will integrate, with Grijelmo, the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi, prize of the novel Alfaguara.

In the context of many "extracurricular" activities, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, there will also be room for humor. Marcos Mundstock, one of the personalities of the group Luthiers, will present at the Teatro San Martín of the capital of Cordoba, representing presentations, a thesis on "minor complaints and corrections suggested to the Royal Academy", according to the newspaper. It going. A menu of words.

There will be "counter-top"

The city of Cordoba will be a hotbed of activity. Parallel to the Congress of Languages, the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the National University of Córdoba is one of the organizers of the "First International Meeting: Language Rights as Rights". man ", which will provoke marked dissidence. A peculiarity is that among the many speakers in both cases, the writers Mempo Giardinelli and María Teresa Andruetto will give the present at both meetings.

In dialogue with ClarinAndruetto said that at the closing of the Congress of the Spanish language, he would refer to the tensions and changes of the Spanish language, while at the parallel meeting he would participate in a tribute to Osvaldo Bayer. "The author is a place of protest, place of discussion, capture of the most unstable forms of language, floating in the orality, "he said stating that, therefore, he accepted the intervention in both forums.

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In the different activities, writers María Moreno and Daniel Link will also participate in the parallel meeting (in addition to other academics).

The alternative congress begins today in the pavilion of the local academic city of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and emphasizes in its manifesto that a reflection is sought "in the Latin American reality, on the problem of languages ​​and their articulation with economic and social, cultural, academic, educational and communication policies "and states that there are" states or institutions seeking to confer on a language (or a variety of languages) a status symbolic superior ". For all tastes.

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