"La unidad de la lengua y la irrupción de la lingüística: el caso Cuervo" ["The Unity of Language and the Emergence of Linguistics: The Case of Cuervo"]

This paper is aimed at reviewing the background and the results of the turn in Colombian philologist Rufino José Cuervo’s thought on the pan-Hispanic unity of language. It thus focuses on the traditions Cuervo’s discourse is part of and breaks away from of, and in how alternative approaches and the controversy they give rise to built original connections between disciplinary specifics and political malleability, here illustrated in the tension between philological reason and raison d’état. The analysis is based on works by Caro, Cuervo, Valera, and Menéndez Pidal that are part of a long-term controversy whose nerve centre was the turn of the century and whose turning point was marked by the ideas of German linguist August Friedrich Pott.