Spanish-Guarani diglossia in colonial Paraguay: A language undertaking
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Yliana Rodriguez
Abstract
The colonial relationship during which the Guarani were reduced by the Jesuits - a religious venture that touched the deepest foundations of the Amerindian culture - led to a situation of diglossia. By reducing the Guarani language to writing, grammars, catechisms and sermons, the Jesuits orchestrated a standardization which would also serve them as a tool of manipulation. Guarani was not marginalized, let alone replaced by Spanish; Guarani was absorbed, and therefore altered. The preservation of the native language by the missionaries appears to have facilitated the religious conversion. The present chapter studies the diglossic relationship in which Guarani suffers a reorientation of some lexical semantic fields; focusing on the domain of religious language.
Abstract
The colonial relationship during which the Guarani were reduced by the Jesuits - a religious venture that touched the deepest foundations of the Amerindian culture - led to a situation of diglossia. By reducing the Guarani language to writing, grammars, catechisms and sermons, the Jesuits orchestrated a standardization which would also serve them as a tool of manipulation. Guarani was not marginalized, let alone replaced by Spanish; Guarani was absorbed, and therefore altered. The preservation of the native language by the missionaries appears to have facilitated the religious conversion. The present chapter studies the diglossic relationship in which Guarani suffers a reorientation of some lexical semantic fields; focusing on the domain of religious language.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Foreword V
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Introduction 1
- Saints, nobility, and other heroes. Colonial place-naming as part of the European linguistic heritage 13
- “The making of Greenland” – Early European place names in Kalaallit Nunaat 43
- Colonial place-names in Italian East Africa (AOI) (with additional data from Tripoli). The linguistic heritage of colonial practice 75
- Linguistic missionary heritage. Capuchin missionary Father Laurentius and his unpublished German-Chuukese dictionary 93
- Positioning by naming: Constructing group affiliation in a colonial setting 115
- Third-hand colonial linguistics: Adolphe Dietrich’s comparative study of Indian Ocean Creoles 139
- Spanish-Guarani diglossia in colonial Paraguay: A language undertaking 153
- Construction of (transcontinental) railways as a means of colonization. A corpus-based analysis on the German colonial discourse in postcolonial perspective 169
- The Raj English in historical lexicography 191
- Anglo-Norman: Language contact and obsolescence 219
- Index of Authors 245
- Index of Languages 249
- Index of Subjects 251
- Index of Toponyms 253
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Foreword V
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Introduction 1
- Saints, nobility, and other heroes. Colonial place-naming as part of the European linguistic heritage 13
- “The making of Greenland” – Early European place names in Kalaallit Nunaat 43
- Colonial place-names in Italian East Africa (AOI) (with additional data from Tripoli). The linguistic heritage of colonial practice 75
- Linguistic missionary heritage. Capuchin missionary Father Laurentius and his unpublished German-Chuukese dictionary 93
- Positioning by naming: Constructing group affiliation in a colonial setting 115
- Third-hand colonial linguistics: Adolphe Dietrich’s comparative study of Indian Ocean Creoles 139
- Spanish-Guarani diglossia in colonial Paraguay: A language undertaking 153
- Construction of (transcontinental) railways as a means of colonization. A corpus-based analysis on the German colonial discourse in postcolonial perspective 169
- The Raj English in historical lexicography 191
- Anglo-Norman: Language contact and obsolescence 219
- Index of Authors 245
- Index of Languages 249
- Index of Subjects 251
- Index of Toponyms 253
