Abstract:
In this article, the criteria of 'purity' and 'corruption' will be discussed regarding a language that became vernacular between Paraguay and the provinces of Misiones and Corrientes (Argentina) since the 16th century. This language, Guaraní, first spread among various indigenous peoples of the American subcontinent before becoming the language of the spaniards, Afro-descendants, and Europeans who settled in this contact area. Reduced by the priests as a 'Christian language' (1609-1768), it was standardized and disseminated, serving as the official language of the Franciscan and Jesuits Missions. Outside the reductions, in the jurisdictions of Corrientes and Paraguay, spoken Guaraní had the peculiarity of being mixed with Spanish and was qualified as 'corrupted' according to testimonies from the period. This concept was linked to religious criteria and a purist ideology of languages. However, the existence of a corpus in the Guaraní language in the 19th century, more in line with the most widepread sociolinguistic reality of the time, allows us to see that, for the authors, the hybridization of two languages was not a danger. Mixing and/or alternating Guaraní and Spanish, in the indigenous conception, was not a transgression that deformed the language, but rather a linguistic competence in a process of territorial integration.
Keywords: Guarani language, Linguistic purity, Hybridization, Contact area.