Norma, Uso Y Autoridad En La Teoría Lingüística Del Siglo XVI

The paper discusses the significance of the concepts of ‘norm’ and ‘usage’ in the linguistic debate in 16th-century Spain. The understanding of what should be accepted as ‘norm’ and what as ‘(grammatical) correctness’ was far from uniform in that period. The concept of ‘authority’ with regard to these questions reveals various interpretations; it is by no means a simple transfer of a Latin classicist model. The authority on what should be regarded as ‘standard’ in the 16th-century discussion appears to have been established along the lines of the importance given to ‘usage’ and the meaning that each grammarian attached to this term. In this paper, altogether three positions are identified: (1) A number of scholars support the Quintilian codification and maintain the classical tradition; (2) others do not recognize any other authority but that of ‘common usage’, understood as the linguistic habits of the speakers, either in terms of a speech community (Valdés), or in terms of the individual speaker (Aldrete), and 3) those who consider ‘reason’, i.e., logic, as the sole principle guiding both grammatical doctrine and linguistic usage (Sanctius).