Writer, journalist, and academic Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) since 2003, published a column in El Mundo in which he ironizes over the Academy's famous motto right in its title: "Why it no longer fixes, cleans, or gives splendor." In his text, he argues that the RAE no longer fulfills its "most noble purpose" of caring for, ordering, and ennobling the Spanish language, and proceeds to explain each of the three parts of the famous phrase.
Pérez-Reverte states that his greatest enmity is directed against social networks and how "the RAE increasingly mentions them as proof of usage." The Academy "waits for improper use to prevail out of weariness, repetition, or media pressure, and then incorporates it into the Dictionary; not as an exception to point out, but as a valid variant."
In the "grotesque meddling of political opportunism, ignorance, and sectarian stupidity in linguistic matters," the author says, the Academy positions itself "between administrative silence and diplomatic caution," something that could be interpreted as "weakness and even cowardice."
The great problem for Pérez-Reverte is "the inversion of linguistic authority," as the RAE would give "more normative weight to what is repeated in poorly written newspapers, hasty headlines, careless talk shows, or social networks, than to the intellectual authority of writers, philologists, and creators who have worked or work on the language with rigor."
According to Pérez-Reverte, the RAE accepts constructions that would have been considered erroneous before, "not after a profound linguistic debate, but due to external pressure." "However, he adds, "the Academy now retreats to more descriptive than normative positions."
He also said that for linguists, "the Academy registers usage," which he understood as a problem, because "to register is not to clean." And he added: "Our job is not to prohibit or scold, that is a very old look; what we must do is to guide."
Versus?
In the RAE's Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts, it is recommended to replace the Anglicized Latinism used in the title of this note "with the Spanish preposition 'against' or the prepositional phrase 'in front of,' as the case may be."
"Without imposing a rigid Spanish, it established clear criteria that facilitated comprehension," says Pérez-Reverte. To this is added "the fear of seeming elitist, conservative, or exclusionary in a hypersensitive cultural sphere."
Regarding fixing, he said that "every language needs anchoring points; without them, it fragments and impoverishes." However, perhaps to the annoyance of Pérez-Reverte, it adds: "Although its use is not censurable, since Spanish words such as 'adversary,' coming from the same Latin root as 'versus,' present the semantic feature of confrontation."
The RAE, by no longer signaling an error, would cause the error to cease to be perceived as such.
Finally, for the writer, "the most serious" is the abandonment of splendor, since the RAE sector responsible for communication "handles an increasingly vulgar register, adapted to the language of social networks, with rapid, witty, and often superficial responses."
Meanwhile, academic Salvador Gutiérrez Ordóñez, director of 'Español al día,' who responds to linguistic consultations addressed to the RAE, was concise in his statement to El Mundo: "The Academy is not the Inquisition, it does not have the key to everything that is correct."
"The language of the networks, designed to impact and not to think, is fragmentary, chaotic, poor in nuances, and prone to incorrectness, vulgarity, and error," he expressed.
There was also time (or space) to refer to inclusive language.
