Politics, euphemisms and political correctness in the language: things by their names or by their mirrors of colors?

We reproduce the full text of the speech of the Argentine author:

All my speeches will deal with Panhispanism, a term that I allow myself to badimilate to the notion of political correctness, which, as I hope to show, is nothing more than a euphemism dirty bad. But to get where I want, I have to solve other problems beforehand. For example, nice adjectives, that the curious dictionary of the Royal Academy defines from three meanings: 1) that denotes a relation with a geographical place [y agrego, ya sea por barrio, pueblo, ciudad, provincia, región, país o continente], 2) belonging to or relating to peoples or nations and 3) belonging to or relating to the lineage or family [a lo que nuevamente sumo, también las entidades políticas]. Gentiles can be justified; that is to say that one can designate a person, mentioning it only by name. For example, I am a Buenos Aires resident of the city of Buenos Aires, not Buenos Aires, as the inhabitants of the province of Buenos Aires call it.

Now the Spaniards have called "Mapuches Araucanians", a name that in the Mapudungun language – which is spoken by this South American people of South America – means "people of the land". The English, on the other hand, to the canoeists of the channel of Beagle, called them "tekenika". Because? Because when Captain Robert Fitzroy asked them how they called in English, the canoeists answered "tekenika", which in yámana – the name the yámanas badigned to themselves – meant "I do not do not understand". And that was enough. Spaniards like the Mapuches, like the English and Yámanas, present a remarkable imbalance of forces. One might think that the conqueror can name the conquered as he pleases. However, the means of mistakenly naming other peoples are not exclusive to the strongest. The imposition of the name also occurs in other contexts. When, before the sixteenth century, the Mapuches resolutely began their expansion to the east by invading the vast plateaus of Argentine Patagonia, even reaching the south of the province of Córdoba, they imposed themselves peacefully – though sometimes also by force – its uses, its customs and, basically, its language for the peoples who were there. In doing so, they also changed their name. Thus the aoniken, originating from southern Argentine Patagonia, began to be called "tehuelches", which, again in Mapudungun, means "brave people", possibly referring to the resistance they opposed the Mapuche expansion. On the other hand, the yámanas who were neighbors of selk-nam, the steppe of Tierra del Fuego, called them with contempt "onas", which, apparently, in yámana means "cold poo". To this day, under the influence of Spain and England, many people refer to the Mapuches as "Araucanians" and to the extinct canoeists of Fueguian as to "Tekenikas", although the missionary Thomas Bridges, considering that the aborigines occupied a territory that they called Yahgashaga, introduced a new mistake and renamed yaganes, a name that, at least in English books, is used to name the yámanas. As you can see, misunderstandings can be imposed in many ways.

Humans, through history, have given names to everything in the world, as well as our way of relating to people and things. Then, with the same frequency and for very different reasons, we made every effort to change the nomenclature under which we designate everything. In some cases, the detail was removed in the name of a supposed synthesis (see Ezra Pound: "the medieval spirit had very little out of words, and was more cautious in its definitions and verbosity. which would define both an explosion, nor an explosion in terms that would define a trigger "). Other times, when the objects ceased to exist, some thought that it was not necessary to keep their names because there was no need for them. go into so many details (see the detailed description of all parts of a chandelier shaped by Gustave Flaubert and the dilemmas that are posed to translators to be able to name them). Until now, there is no problem. Thanks to philologists, linguists and lexicographers, we know that each century loses 20% of its vocabulary and gains another. However, we have sometimes thought that we need to change the way we name things, in order to forge the fiction that reality can also change and, why not, improve. These phenomena have occurred at almost all times and among almost all peoples. This kind of linguistic deception is called "euphemism", a term that the DRAE, always abstract and ineffective, defines with its usual grace as "a manifestation of soft or decorative ideas, whose direct and frank expression would be hard or bad ". The Robert dictionary, on the other hand, perhaps by a French more effective than Spanish, says that the euphemism is "the attenuated expression of a notion whose direct expression would have something unpleasant ". And the word "disappeared" is given as an example by "death", which, in Argentina, is quite relevant. The Webster's dictionary, in turn, with a true Anglo-Saxon pragmatism, emphasizes that the euphemism is "the substitution of a word or phrase that might offend or suggest something unpleasant to another, harmless or pleasant ". And he offers examples: instead of war, "armed conflict"; instead of dying, "stretch out your leg".

For many reasons, at one point in the 1980s, euphemisms spawned in the United States the "politically correct" term used to describe language, policies or measures designed to avoid offending or harming disadvantage the members. of particular groups of society. This practice may have emerged as one of the most fallacious fruits of Protestantism when progressives decided to buy a good conscience by calling African Americans "Blacks" and "Indians" Indians. Beyond the justice that many people have read in these changes, there is no doubt that they are a new demonstration of the hypocrisy of this country. Because? Because the aesthetic nature of these changes does not hide the administrative denomination of the population clbadified in several really alarming categories: Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos; which in good Spanish means whites, blacks, those who come from the Far East, those who speak Castilian and who are morochos. One could thus conclude that one Norwegian from Lilyhammer and one Italian from Taormina are identical; or that a pbading student from Ethiopia and a Chicago bluesman are the same; or that an Izmir Turk and a Japanese from Osaka are the same; or that a Puerto Rican, a Mexican, a Chilean, a Paraguayan or an Argentinian are the same. By doing this, the Americans show the hilacha and turn any Mexican into a possible "wet back" for all terrorist Arabs and all blacks, well, in black, we already know what that means in the United States.

By contagion and at the same time, everyone started to worry about the politically correct. Thus, all the blind people started to be "blind" and all the disabled people started to have "special abilities". Which, in principle, was considered a way to avoid exclusion, marginalization or insult to those who were discriminated against, especially for reasons of ethnicity or bad, covered the most diverse aspects of culture and gave rise to "retirement homes" (for "old people's homes") and, already in the economic world, "staff reductions" (for "and" rationalization of resources "(for wages) and, in the world of war," collateral damage "(for" civilian victims "). Is it any wonder that in Argentina there is today is an adult diaper mark called "Plenitud"?

The subject is vast and therefore incomprehensible in the ten minutes that I have for this presentation. I'm focusing on a concept whose embezzlement has given rise to a euphemism that has been heard a lot in hallways these days and that serves the function of bare bone with a little meat, so that he who receives it does not die completely of hunger: Panhispanism.

Many people, with the Spaniards at the top, name the language in which I manifest myself as "Spanish". Why call it like this? Why is it the majority language in Spain? I understand that it is the Castilian dialect, just a territory that, during the conquest of the peninsula, imposed itself militarily, politically and economically to other Spanish territories in which other languages ​​were spoken, some very different Castilian and even more. Sophisticated I realize later that excluding Spanish, Spanish, Galician, Catalan, Basque and other varieties also spoken in Spanish are excluded. If this were the case, one might think that other Spaniards, who do not speak Spanish as their first language, are not necessarily as Spanish as Spaniards who speak only Spanish, which would amount to considering them as Spaniards. second clbad. Then there is a political problem which filters in the field of language and which deserves some details. Otherwise, one might think that the regions where other languages ​​are spoken in Spain are occupied territories and that "Spanish" is only the variant of Madrid (which, moreover, does not include the Andalusian variant of which we make fun in Madrid). Not to mention Latin America, where we speak different varieties of Castilian, contrasting with those of the peoples who preceded us in these territories and those who emigrated to our cities. I at this table, I do not speak "spanish", but my variant of Spanish, which is the River Plate. And in the movie Romeby Alfonso Cuarón, the variant of the city of Mexico is spoken Moreover, the latter seems very difficult for the Spanish, who had to subtitle sentences such as; "If you want to stay, that's the rule", and put "if you want to stay, that's the rule", when screening this film in Spain.

With a certain simplicity, some will want to hide these problems in an attempt to depoliticize them. Now, if they were not political, what is the Spanish monarch doing here, presiding over a congress in which only philologists, linguists, lexicographers, writers, translators and language teachers should participate? Does the king preside over the congresses of dentists, dyers or pastry cooks? Clearly, no, because the interests at stake with regard to language are different. We know it from Antonio de Nebrija, who told Catholic kings that they could not conquer America without grammar, which they did at the expense of 9 million indigenous people killed, according to Tzvetan Todorov's statistics .

And here it should be recalled that Spain has attributed the Castilian language to "Marca España" – now referred to as "Global Spain" – and that, as this has not changed governments of left to those on the right, there is no other remedy for thinking that this is a state issue and, if I am not mistaken, the king is the official at life representing the Spanish State. And when one wonders why all this, the economy suddenly appears: the language considered good to consume through dictionaries and grammars generated by the Royal Spanish Academy, courses and methods of teaching. evaluation promoted by the Cervantes Institute, books published by the Spanish multinationals, examinations requested to the good offices of Telefónica de España and, most loosely, free corrections from the FUNDEU (Urgent Spanish Foundation), which, as everyone should know, are the fruit of an agreement and a participation of the bank BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya) and the Agency EFE.

At this point, and putting things in the shadows, someone will rush to invoke panhispanism, thus making it known that the Spaniards, fearing the fragmentation of the Castilian language, have become fashionable in linguistic terms in the world . Philology Assembly of the First Congress of Hispanic Institutions, a convention convened in 1963 by the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, an institution created by Francisco Franco in 1945, to circumvent, through Latin America, the ostracism that world diplomacy had condemned to his dictatorship. Among the conclusions of one of the committees of this congress – more specifically that devoted to "the unity of Spanish" – reads: "The Commission considers that any action in favor of the future of the Spanish language , aiming at the desirable unification of the language of culture, should be done in full respect of the national varieties used by educated speakers and bearing in mind that linguistic unity does not occur. is not inconsistent with the plurality of fundamental norms, phonetic and other type that characterizes the exemplary and prestigious discourse of each Hispanic region ". Someone thought of calling this "Pan-Hispanic Language Policy", a euphemism for "we keep doing what we want" because, to this day, it has only served Spanish publishers to reject the translations made by the Latin Americans on the pretext that "they are bad", so that FUNDEU goes where they do not call it by exerting constant pressure for the Latin American media to adopt the linguistic uses imposed by the Royal Academy, etc. Meanwhile, many of the DRAE's words indicate "Americanism", or "argentism", or "Mexican", but never "Spanishism", as if what was said in Spain was the norm and what is said on that side- the Atlantic (and not Atlantic: consonants are pronounced in Latin) the defect.

In the past, when the world was more balanced, when the author's right "for the language" was not bought in an abusive manner, thus imposing a single possible translation for all the Castilian provinces, Alfonso Reyes and Jorge Luis Borges had already struggling for these issues, just with many Spanish participants concerned about "the unity of Spanish". Borges and Reyes, who liberated us from the Spanish proverb, were not the only ones. Fortunately, Vicente Huidobro, César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, and many others, Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Juan José Saer and many others, thanks to their respective works, have succeeded in Castilian, an expressive language full of nuances, which the Latin American writers continue to do, already so far from the old speech of the congresses. Nowadays it is more than obvious that we have to fight again for these same problems because it is clear that language is not only a communication tool or a form of expression of the human spirit, but also a commodity that seeks to exchange, for example, in the United States, which will count in 2050 the largest number of speakers of the Spanish language. As the Cervantes Institute has already warned, there will be a lot to sell. Will our Pan-Hispanic parents from the peninsula want to share the benefits or will they offer us again, as in the past, colored mirrors? What will be the Pan-Hispanic percentage of each?

*Jorge Fondebrider participated together in Ivonne Bordelois, Jorge Volpi, Alex Grijelmo and the philologist Pedro Álvarez de Miranda of the table "Political correction and language"