2.3.3. From the layperson to the specialist

The experiences known to the media work, according to the terminology of Patrick Charaudeau (2003 [1997]: 187-223) as “acontecimientos referidos”, which can be commented (“acontecimientos comentados”) and confronted (“acontecimientos provocados”). While in the commentary, facilitated thanks to the new technologies present in the media, laymen and connoisseurs of the aforementioned events mingle, in the confrontation, however, they appeal to the knowledge of the latter. Accordingly, the level of specialization in reaction to events is a continuum that goes from less, in the case of readers’ opinions, to more, in the case of popularisers and the cultivation of a journalistic sub-genre such as the opinion column.

2.3.3.1. The irruption of the readers

The comments section in the news published in digital newspapers are an obvious example of the democratization of public opinion. The comments of the readers, who inhabit the digital ecosystems in which they are mostly immersed, occupying scenarios that until now had only a visible manifestation in the Letters to the Editor section, where there was a stricter screening of the participation of readers compared to today’s screening. In any case, this inconvenience does not detract from the speeches that citizens offer, not always from anonymity, which would take a lot of effort to try to achieve them by researchers. We are thinking, for example, about the linguistic questionnaires, whose use does not always report the same spontaneity and absence of pressure that the digital media provided (anonymity, inductions in the responses, etc.). However, these texts constitute a rather complicated object of study because researchers lack data, not provided by the participants, which would undoubtedly yield information of special relevance for the later analysis.

From a small corpus of comments that will be studied in deeply in another work,8 we have selected a group of comments that allows us to briefly contribute conclusions related to linguistic ideologies about Andalusian, the result of a long and arbitrary process of scorn and devaluing not only as a dialectal variety, but also to its speakers. In the comments analysed we observe three circumstances that we want to highlight: on the one hand, the terminological confusion showed by the citizens about the definition of what Andalusian is (language, dialect, accent…); on the other hand, an absolute disregard for this language variant and the discrimination against its speakers; and, finally, the contempt for speakers of some varieties of Spanish –different from Castilian– for their linguistic idiosyncrasy.

There is no consensus on how Andalusian should be characterised (language, dialect, speech, modality or linguistic variety). There is not even an agreement to recognise it as a unit, beyond the linguistic studies that divide Andalusia into an eastern and a western region. The terminological variety, which Elena Méndez García de Paredes defines as “lastre teórico y conceptual” (2003: 216), is transmitted to the population through education and, therefore, school textbooks, which use terminology that it does not contribute to eradicating inequalities and discrimination based on language. In