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- Title
No seas buey, cabrón: De lo rudo a lo cálido en el tratamiento interpersonal.
- Authors
Maldonado, Ricardo
- Abstract
This paper focuses on the recent diachronic evolution of two warm-address forms, buey and cabrón, which originally designated animals 'ox' and 'mail goat' and rapidly extended as offensive forms of stupidity and evilness. An array of changes involving semantic bleaching led these forms develop pragmatic values as vocative address forms and, further, as discourse markers. The current use of these forms is proposed to be interpreted as symbols of crucial social changes in Mexican society that emerged around the 1960s. The social meaning of the emergence of these forms is explored. Moreover, based on the comparison of three oral corpora representing different degrees of formality, the analysis shows how lexical forms gradually lost semantic properties to adopt new pragmatic values. Phonemic erosion [buey] > [guéi] > [wei] > [we] // [kabrón] > [kabrón] > [kaón] is seen as a reflex of crucial semantic bleaching steps leading to address forms of familiarity and to discourse marking functions in a recurrent pragmaticalization process.
- Subjects
DISCOURSE markers; VALUES (Ethics); SOCIAL change; EROSION; POSTAL service; GOAT breeds
- Publication
Spanish in Context, 2024, Vol 21, Issue 1, p78
- ISSN
1571-0718
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1075/sic.00104.mal