Linguistic variations of Spanish language in Argentinian school books: Between state policies and the market

Abstract

In this paper we examine the procurement and delivery of schoolbooks by the Ministry of Education of Argentina as an example of language policies aimed to establishing a Pan-Hispanic discourse. The central hypothesis is that the mass purchase of school books becomes the regulatory axis of school language policy. To test this hypothesis, we first examine the relationship between respect of diversity —as mandated by the National Education Law (Nº 26.206)— and the unifying interpretation that global publishers instill into their schoolbooks of Spanish teaching. Secondly, we discuss the bidding conditions that the government imposes for the procurement and the benefits these represent for global publishing houses.
The corpus consists of a number of primary education schoolbooks as well as national and provincial regulations related to the teaching of the Spanish language. Within the sociolinguistics (Blommaert, 2010) and glotopolitics (Narvaja de Arnoux, 2008; Narvaja de Arnoux & Del Valle, 2010) framework, the article aims to determine whether the lack of an explicit regulation on the selection of schoolbooks could impact the editorial design of the language representations that schools transfer to the population.