The questioning Authority. Evaluative strategies and argumentation in the column "La Academia española trabaja" [The Spanish Academy at work] (1959–1964)

Resumen

This work has as its aim to analyze the role of linguistic evaluative mechanisms as argumentative strategies in Julio Casares’ column “The Spanish Academy works” from the Theory of Valuation. It is our assumption that language discourse not only transmits information but also serves as a means to construct concepts and social identities, regarding both language itself and its actors or subjects. Evidence will be provided that it is the centripetal forces of language and society that question academic authority in this case. The resources used by this columnist to maintain his point of view and justify his decisions on the basis of academic authority are going to be examined. The corpus comprises the thirty-two articles written by Julio Casares under the heading “The Spanish Academy works” in ABC newspaper between March 1959 and January 1964.