CONVERSATION GUIDES
4.8 SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING THE CORPUS
After a detailed analysis of the diverse primary sources in this chapter, several points can be elucidated as to the phenomenon of ELT in nineteenth-century in Spain. Firstly, a brief quantitative study of the primary sources published in Spain is provided to better gauge their impact. Secondly, the findings of three female authors who contributed to the linguistic production of English grammars and dictionaries: Anne Mountifield, María Teresa Magawly de Calry and Ana María Gironés. Lastly, diverse extracts from the prologues to those English grammars and dictionaries related to ELT in Spain.
From a quantitative point of view, our corpus of English grammar and dictionaries gathers sixty-six works in total: fifty-two grammars and fourteen dictionaries. Graph 1 (see below) shows the evolution of the publication of this type of works throughout
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our period of study.
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Graph 4. Evolution of the publication of English grammars and dictionaries in Spain (1769-1900).
Graph 4 shows an increasing tendency in the publication of English grammars and dictionaries as the nineteenth century advances reaching its peak in the second half of that century. Graph 5 (see below) deepens into the quantitative study of the English grammars and dictionaries by showing the quantity of the first editions of English grammars and dictionaries published in Spain in the course of the same period.
6 3 3 2 5 8 10 5 7 7 10
1769-1800 1801-1810 1811-1820 1821-1830 1831-1840 1841-1850 1851-1860 1861-1870 1871-1880 1881-1890 1891-1900
Graph 5.Publication of first editions of English grammars and dictionaries in Spain (1769-1900).
Graph five indicates a regular publication throughout the period in general although there are two distinct trends. The first one encompasses the first four decades of the 19th century when the production of English grammars and dictionaries in Spain is
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relatively low although they double the quantity in comparison to the period 1769-1800. A significant increase takes place from the 1840s onwards reaching its higher peak in the 1850s. This decade witnessed a high production of first editions showing that illiteracy rates were beginning to decline, although at a very slow pace, and coinciding with a relatively peaceful political situation in Spain and a bigger offer in terms of public education. At that time, Spain must have benefited from the cultural and intellectual legacy of many Spanish emigrants who, having come back from exile in earlier decades, brought with them a wealth of new skills and knowledge at the service of Spaniards. The following map in Image 1 shows the principal editorial centres in Spain where those English grammars and dictionaries were published. Madrid clearly stands out as the main editorial centre both between 1769 and 1800 and all along the nineteenth century closely followed by Barcelona and at a greater distance by Cádiz.
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However, there is an obvious dominance of publications on coastal cities due to their commercial activity and the establishment of Commerce studies which triggered the study of English and other FLs, as we have seen in chapter three, in contrast to inland cities with the exception of Madrid, the capital of Spain. In total, the corpus of grammars and dictionaries yields sixty-six works published in Spain during the period object of our study. Of these, fourteen correspond to dictionaries and the remaining fifty-two to grammars. Some twenty-five works englobe manuals other than grammars and dictionaries and are formed by translation books and bilingual literary anthologies, probably the most representative types of pedagogical works in our period coinciding with the tenets of the mainstream Grammar-Translation Method. However, the technological advances brought forward by the Industrial Revolution, especially from the second half of the 19th century onwards, in transport (the railway and the steamers) or in telecommunications (the telegraph), allowed people and their messages to move
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faster and thus the use of conversational guides resurfaced again from their origins back in Renaissance times and were to linger on until the present time. The-traditional-versus -direct-method antagonism of the late nineteenth century ushered in a new period in the evolution of FLT spurred by the application of a scientific approach to the field of FLT that was to mark, and still does, its development. But that is another story which lies beyond the scope of this study.
Our second point deals with another neglected topic in the historiography of ELT in Spain brought to light after a thorough examination of the corpus of English grammars and dictionaries in its different versions: the presence of female linguists in a male-dominating period. Anne Mountifield had come to Spain together with her husband, Carlos148 Mountifield, a former French teacher in Oxford University. At the end of the prologue to the second edition (1854) of their English grammar, Anne Mountifield signs a document where she states that, due to her husband’s death, she has taken up the task of preparing the second and subsequent editions of their grammar (1858, 1861). Though the author on the title pages of all the editions is Carlos Mountifield, there is no doubt that his wife, Anne Mountifield, contributed to the diffusion of ELT in Spain.
The case of Magawly de Calry, our second female author, has turned out a major finding indeed. Her name appears at the end of the prologue to her English grammar (1834) although it does not appear in any of the catalogues consulted. They regard her grammar as either anonymous or written by several authors (Esparza and Niederehe (2012) consider her the editor of the grammar which we have determined to be inaccurate after consulting her English grammar). Undoubtedly, her name should become part of the historiography of ELT in Spain. The same can be said of our last female author, Ana Gironés, who co-authored a bilingual English-Spanish dictionary together with the American lexicographer Emanuel Wesseley in 1889. Both became familiar names in bilingual lexicography until the mid-twentieth century.
The authors fell into three main categories. The first one is formed by those Spaniards, who wrote their works in Spain (Joaquin de San Pedro and Tomás González Torres de Navarra in the 18th century and Francisco Piferrer, Clemente Cornellas, Eduardo Benot, etc. in the 19th century). The second group is formed by Spanish emigrants 148 In nineteenth-century Spain it was very common to hispanize foreign authors’ names (Juan Steffan, Jorge Shipton, Carlos Mountifield, Guillermo Casey, etc.) and to anglicize some Spanish authors’ names (Francis Piferrer, etc.). It was a fashion that was to disappear with the onset of the 20th century.
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who first published their works abroad and that, in some cases, were later published in Spain (a point in case is Jose de Urcullu who published an English grammar while in the exile in London in 1825 for Spaniards (1st ed.) which was later published in Spain in the mid-1840s. Other authors in this category are Corona Bustamante, Mariano Cubí, Ana Gironés, Eugenio de Ochoa, etc. The last group is formed by those foreign authors who settled down in Spain either temporarily or for good. Juan Steffan and Thomas Connelly, in the eighteenth century, and Guillermo Casey, Carlos and Anne Mountifield, John Shaw, Magawly de Calry, etc. are clear exponents of this group.
Lastly, we leave the last word to the authors themselves of our corpus from a double point of view. Firstly, several quotes from their prologues or other para-text extracts are selected and given in chronological order. Secondly, a list of all the pedagogical works written by all the authors who published ELT materials in Spain shows first-hand historical accounts which shed some light on their authors’ intentions in writing their English pedagogical works. Both cover a wide range of key aspects for the historiography of ELT in Spain, such as the production of linguistic works, on the one hand, and the importance of studying English, bibliographical notes, plagiarism, sources, target audience and other linguistic considerations on the other hand. In particular, they are meant to embody the pedagogical spirit of ELT in Spain between 1769 and 1900.
4.8.1. Prologues and other paratext extracts from authors in the corpus
“Viendo que la Nación inglesa hace el comercio activo de la Europa, y que en nuestra España contrata, y comercia estableciendo precisas correspondencias con nuestros compatriotas…; y que por otra parte escriben los Ingleses sabiamente de todas las ciencias, y facultades: formé esta Gramática Inglesa…, por no hallarse otra en que V.S. disimule otro atrevimiento.”
Joaquin de San Pedro, 1769: Dedicatoria, i-ii.
“Los Caballeros y Negociantes Alemanes, Holandeses, Rusos, Suecos, Dinamarqueses, Españoles, y aun los Franceses, conociendo no solo las ventajas literarias, sino tambien la utilidad en paz y en guerra de la lengua inglesa, extendida con su comercio en todas las partes del orbe, y… por ser la que usan los Estados Unidos de la Nueva
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