With the Araucanian studies in Chile, which are published in journals and newsletters of scientific institutions, a modern science about the culture of the Mapuche and, in particular, on their language, emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. Whether asa central theme, that is, from a philological perspective, or as a vehicle and illustration of ethnological and/or ethnographic studies, these publications register in mapudungun words and examples of use, translated or explained, as well as samples of oral literature, transcribed and translated. A thinking and discourse about the language and its speakers is thus built around this illustrative corpus. Translation practices are central to the process, and are part of language description and regulation devices, revealing the conflicts underlying the hegemonic vs subaltern language relationship. In this work we approach some of the authors that we consider most influential, and who published in the scientific journals of the period 1895-1935, which we call of classical araucanian studies. From a linguistic-translational and anthropological perspective, we analyze the discourses about the language and its speakers in that period, in which mapudungun is considered to recede to intraethnic areas, and show the complexity and ambivalence of the authors’ positions as well as some implications these discourses may have had on the language and its speakers themselves.
Keywords:
Castilianization in Araucania, linguistic ideologies, Araucanian studies, ethnographic translation
Author Biographies
Gertrudis Payàs, Universidad Católica de Temuco
Departamento de Lenguas y Núcleo de Estudios Interculturales e Interétnicos (NEII), Universidad Católica de Temuco.
Héctor Mora, Universidad Católica de Temuco
Departamento de Antropología y Núcleo de Estudios Interculturales e Interétnicos (NEII), Universidad Católica de Temuco.
Aurora Sambolín, Universidad Católica de Temuco
Departamento de Lenguas, Universidad Católica de Temuco.
Payàs, G., Mora, H., & Sambolín, A. (2020). The mapuche language and its speakers in the Araucanian studies classical texts. Boletín De Filología, 55(1), pp. 117–159. Retrieved from https://anuariocdh.uchile.cl/index.php/BDF/article/view/57729
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