El idioma, construcción social e ideológica de la lengua / Language, social and ideological construction of the tongue

It is useful to preserve the dichotomy between Spanish terms lengua and idiomaas this will enable us to understand some of the old controversial argumentssuch as the existence of an Argentinian idioma, the perception of historic languageslike Asturiano or Aragonés as being vulgar dialects, or the acknowledgementof an idioma valenciano which is different from the idioma catalán. Whilethe term lengua refers to a linguistic system, the term idioma works as a positiveimage for the representation of one particular community. This is an intuitiveimage, which does not have much in common with a linguistic analysis, butrather is deeply rooted in ideological and affective reasons. Therefore, the idiomais built around a form of “folk” thinking, in which the linguists participateas well.