Resumen de Bernardo de Aldrete's Del origen: rejecting multilingualism and linguistic essentialism in Early Modern Spain
This study focuses on the language ideology implicit in Bernardo de Aldrete's Del origen y principio de la lengua castellana que oi se usa en España (Aldrete, 1606/1975) with regards to linguistic essentialism and multilingualism. While Aldrete's work has been studied from the perspective of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, his book is more than a demonstration of how Castilian descended from Latin and goes beyond an attack on the theory of the “primitive Castilian”, according to which Castilian was one of the 72 languages that had originated in Babel. By describing the linguistic situation in Babel, Emporiae, Visigothic Hispania, and Early Modern Iberia, Aldrete rejects the concept of linguistic essentialism, according to which a language represents a natural, eternal and immutable identity, arguing that Castilian is the best candidate to become the common language of a new monolingual world in the Early Modern Period. In this context, the rejection of linguistic essentialism entails accepting military power as the most important criterion determining a language's value.
