GREAT LANDMARKS OF LEXICAL RENEWAL IN SPANISH

Abstract

In this paper we propose to stablish that great changes in the history of Spanish lexical system form a part of discourse structures which arose from the transformation of ideologies maintained by the several orders of social reality. Language, immersed in that reality, has been —and it is nowadays— part of processes of collective mental changes. Language manages to express those changes in a different lexical and grammatical style, setting in motion new forms of verbal transaction. Transformations of a lexical corpus of Spanish were accompanied with political and cultural changes of western christian world. The arrival of Spanish conquerors to these lands produces the first version of globalisation, as it is called today, from a phisical-geographic, ethnic, linguistic and cultural point of view. World-extended lexicon was the resultant of a double wedge linguistic force. The Industrial Revolution of XIXth century put pressure on the Spanish language, as on the other known languages, for unifying and world-wide extending names of products in order to favour its international circulation. Finally, in all these millenia, cultural internationalization and technological determinism have transformed our minds; now our communication codes need lexical forms to be more adjusted to new cognitive dimensions and another social demands. The approach to this renewed lexicon supposes the existence of groups of specialists in innovative fields, for them to have enough expertise and dominion in order to make an useful lexical selection for the command of receiver’s comprehension processes and the processes of discourse production which spread changes of prevailing ways of thinking.