An Authentic Pan-Hispanic Language Policy? Spain as the Point of Reference in the Spanish Royal Academy’s Diccionario de la lengua espaÑola

Abstract

Abstract Despite the Spanish Royal Academy’s claim that it has broken away from its Eurocentric perspective and embraced a pan-Hispanic approach, a careful analysis of its dictionary, the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE), reveals a clear bias in favor of Peninsular Spanish usage and a systematic relegation of Latin American Spanish to an inferior, subsidiary status. This paper arises out of that specific concern and is focused on a close reading of the Spanish Royal Academy’s DLE in its most recent electronic version 23.1 (2017). In this paper we will show that the Real Academia Española’s claim of a pan-Hispanic approach is in fact a disingenuous smokescreen and that, in reality, the DLE places Latin American Spanish usage in an inferior and subsidiary status via-a-vis Peninsular Spanish usage. To demonstrate this, we have classified selected dictionary entries into two categories: 1) Latin American Spanish usages that are defined by cross-references to the term used in Peninsular Spanish; and 2) usages that occur frequently in Spain and rarely in Spanish-speaking Latin America (Peninsular Spanish usages or españolismos) but are defined in the Dictionary with no geographic marker whatsoever. The results of our analysis reveal that the DLE repeatedly presents Peninsular Spanish usage as if it were General Spanish or ‘neutral Spanish’ and portrays Latin American Spanish as the ‘other.’ This study reveals the fallacy of the RAE’s pan-Hispanic language policy, an institutional device that attempts to force linguistic unity centered around Peninsular Spanish usage where no such unity in fact exists. We will also show that the motivation for this policy stems from a combination of a neocolonial bias and economic interests that seek to promote Spain’s international standing and branding as a country.