From naturalism to nationalism (1845-1900). Some philological interventions in the nineteenth century Argentina

Abstract

This article seeks to make a critical interpretation of the process of incorporation, establishment and consecration of the naturalist approach on the Argentinian linguistic reflexion in the second half of the XIX century. The analysis delimits a period between the first works of Vicente Fidel López (1845) and the publication of two contributions of Luciano Abeille and Ernesto Quesada (1900) —two emblematic works in the history of the debate on the national language; specifically, we interpret the philological labor of a series of intellectuals whose contributions operated some kind of political intervention on the Argentine imaginary of the time. We observed that, for researchers from different areas of knowledge, naturalism as an epistemological model, in general, and comparativism as a linguistic theory, in particular, became a methodological instrument able to support ethnic and/or cultural affiliations that they sought to draw. Thus, we think that the process of consolidation of the naturalist paradigm in Argentina cannot be studied except by virtue of the development of a broader civic and social movement: nationalism, both in its Argentinizing version and in its Pan-Hispanic version.