CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Kit Woolard (Anthropology, UCSD), October 27, 2000.

"The Origins of Spanish: A 17th Century Intrigue of Language, Religion and Race."

This talk is drawn from ongoing research on linguistic ideologies in early modern Spain (15th-17th c.), where several competitions of Spanish with other languages developed simultaneously, including: Latin, other European (especially Romance) vernaculars, Arabic, and Amerindian languages. The project examines the ways that cultural conceptions of language were linked (or not) across these conflicts, as well as the role they played in the formation of the early Spanish state, empire, and proto-nation.

Here I will tell the story of just one controversy, over whether Spanish originated in Latin or at Babel. The debate flared dramatically at the beginning of the 17th century and was followed by scholars, clergy, and the royal court. Tracing its roots leads us into a tale of civic rivalries and Counter-Reformation struggles, of ambitious royal careers, of buried treasures, of miracles and forgeries, of intolerance and debates over genocide.