The transcription of flamenco songs raise various issues connected to their linguistic features and their symbolic value. This thesis addresses the phonological representations underlying the written forms found in the first collections, published in Spain between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. We approach these non-orthographical spellings from three different and complementary perspectives: a metalinguistic one, a cultural-historical one, and an epistemological-historical one.They imply phonological descriptions of the language of flamenco songs that are linked to different cultural representations about the “Andalusian people” conveyed by the authors themselves. These cultural representations are studied in the tumultuous context of the social and political reorganization and the symbolic and identity-related search that took place in Spain both at a national and at regional or local level at that time. Thus, this work focuses on the role played by the Spanish folklorists in the search for Andalusian peculiarities.The establishment of these transcription systems emanated from a scientific framework featuring the institutionalization of folk-studies in Spain and Europe, and the rise of new knowledge areas in linguistics. European linguists and Spanish folklorists shared ideas and materials, a process that led to some misunderstandings that were perpetrated through the following decades.In this way, the underlying linguistic representations acquire the status of prototypes, that participate to cultural constructions and that are legitimated by their connection to an international and interdisciplinary scientific network.