Spanish author lambasts linguistic academy over social media influence | Spain
One of Spain’s best-known novelists has launched a devastating attack on the country’s leading language authority, saying it ignores the views of writers when it comes to language change and that “anything goes with the Taliban” has given way to social media, commentators and influencers.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte used A column in Monday’s El Mundo blame Royal Spanish Academy Due to the inability of the RAE (RAE), of which he is a member, to fulfill the mission for which he put forward the famous slogan “to clean, repair and give shine” to the Spanish language.
These days, he said, “an illiterate pundit, YouTuber or influencer can have more linguistic influence than a Cervantes prize winner.”
The author of the Captain Alatriste series lamented that the voices of professional writers who are members of the academy “are hardly counted in the RAE today.” He wrote: “Whether alive or recently deceased, many have pointed out errors, impoverishments and trivializations in the language, only to find that the currently dominant section of academia – the ‘anything goes’ Taliban – ignores them or treats them as respectable but irrelevant views.
“This is really serious because writers don’t just preserve the language, they work with it and project it into the future.”
Founded in 1713, the RAE is charged with ensuring that “the changes that the Spanish language undergoes in its constant adaptation to the needs of its speakers do not disrupt the fundamental unity that it maintains in the Spanish world.”
Pérez-Reverte was particularly dismissive of the claim that the academy existed to record language rather than to set rules for its proper use. “If all majority usage, no matter how crude or inaccurate, is automatically considered valid, the concept of correctness loses its meaning,” he wrote.
“And therein lies one of the problems. The current RAE accepts structures that would have been deemed faulty years ago, not after in-depth linguistic debate, but because of external pressure. It too easily and often simply succumbs to media, political or social media use.”
According to Pérez-Reverte, much of the blame lies with social media and academia’s adoption of social media terminologies.
“RAE’s reliance on social media is damaging to its image,” he said. “Academic standards are becoming colloquial; rigor is negotiable. Everything is accepted, and any brave ignorant can outdo Cervantes, Galdós or García Márquez if he persists.”
The academy did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment but sources there He told Europa Press He said Pérez-Reverte’s complaints, which he described as a “personal and of course respectable opinion”, would be analyzed meticulously.
“The RAE plenary will verify whether it has the support of other academics, the scope and accuracy of the data on which it is based, and, if necessary, propose appropriate measures to correct, as urgently as possible, the operational deficiencies that academician Pérez-Reverte has publicly disclosed,” the sources said.
“He will begin discussing these immediately, and it is expected that the academic will be able to present and defend his proposals before the institution’s general meeting.”
