Media language as a canon and as an object of criticism in normative grammar

Abstract

The selection of examples' samples that are used in the regulatory coding of Spanish is related to theoretical concepts which are used as a basis, in each historical period, to undertake grammatical reflection. The authority over the usage has traditionally corresponded in academia to the literary sources, which have been primarily used to illustrate the normative model both in the lexicographical and grammatical task. The introduction of new textual typologies in academic production is linked to a change in the theoretical conception in which a language is no longer conceived as a monolithic and homogeneous block, but where linguistic variation constitutes an inherent feature of the same historical condition. That is why it is not surprising that, in the list of texts, it is increasingly common to find a large corpus composed of periodicals. This incorporation of newspaper samples in recent scholarship, embodied in the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (2005) and the Nueva gramática de la lengua Española (2009), replaces also to some extent the academic silence in relation to the doubts and linguistic hesitations raised by media professionals. After the historical tracking of the appearance of journalistic samples in the regulatory academic modelling, it will be sought to establish whether there has been a change in the functionality of these quotes so that they are no longer used exclusively with the assessment of idiomatic exemplary - as the samples of literary texts were mainly used in the work of academia's traditional coding -, but also as incorrect variants subject to a more or less veiled critic towards certain uses mostly confined to the current journalistic discourse.