Mentality and ideologies in letters from the first years of contact in ‘America’?

¿Mentalidad e ideologías en cartas de los primeros años de contacto en “América”?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to gain insight into the mentality and ideology of the people who lived at the end of the 15^th century in “America”: the new arrivals and the natives. We will base our research on two letters, one by Diego Álvares Chanca (a former royal physician) and another by Michele da Cuneo (a merchant? from northern Italy). By doing so, we aim to contribute to the study of mentalities and ideologies from a linguistic perspective. We will use historical data, ecdotic tools, discourse analysis, and the concept of discursive traditions. These letters represent some of the earliest examples of colonial American textuality. We believe that the data we find in these texts allow us to gain insight into what was going on the in the minds of those present and into their mentality, but not into their ideology in the classical sense of the term.