The Linguist as a Hero: Rodolfo Lenz and the Field of Language Studies in Chile

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46744/bapl.202501.007
Keywords: linguistic historiography, glotopolitics, field, heroization, Rodolfo Lenz

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the process of heroization of the German linguist Rodolfo Lenz (1863-1938) and its relationship with the constitution of the field of language studies in Chile. The analyzed material belongs to a set of biographical discourses dated between 1920 and 1938. As an interpretative framework, we draw on the glotopolitical approach, the studies of the cultural history of science, and the sociology of disciplinary fields. We propose to understand this process as a collective operation that serves to consolidate the field of scientific language studies in Chile, which had been emerging since the last decade of the nineteenth century and which, with the heroization of Lenz, achieves a center or point of reference around which values and positions are established, as well as strategies and interests make sense.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Darío Rojas, Universidad de Chile

Es doctor en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad de Valladolid y académico (profesor asociado) del Departamento de Lingüística de la Universidad de Chile. Sus investigaciones, situadas desde el enfoque glotopolítico, tratan sobre la formación de ideologías lingüísticas en Chile desde el siglo xix en adelante, en el marco de la construcción del Estado-nación y en relación con la legitimación de las desigualdades en Chile. Ha publicado más de medio centenar de artículos en revistas científicas y capítulos de libro sobre sus intereses investigativos; además, ha coeditado la antología Autorretrato de un idioma. Crestomatía glotopolítica del español (Lengua de Trapo, 2021). También es autor del libro de divulgación ¿Por qué los chilenos hablamos como hablamos? (Uqbar, 2015) y de una edición crítica del Diccionario de chilenismos, de Zorobabel Rodríguez (Peter Lang, 2024).

Published
2025-08-20
How to Cite
Rojas, D. (2025). The Linguist as a Hero: Rodolfo Lenz and the Field of Language Studies in Chile. Boletín de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua, (77), 223-259. https://doi.org/10.46744/bapl.202501.007
Issue
No 77 (2025): Enero - Junio
Section
Articles

Authors retain their rights:

a. The authors retain their trademark and patent rights, as well as any process or procedure described in the article.
b.The authors retain the right to share, copy, distribute, perform and communicate publicly the article published in the Boletín de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua (for example, placing it in an institutional repository or publishing it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in the Boletín de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua.
c. Authors retain the right to make a subsequent publication of their work, to use the article or any part of it (for example: a compilation of their work, notes for conferences, thesis, or for a book), as long as they indicate the source of publication (authors of the work, journal, volume, number and date).