Ritual and conversational discourse in Nahuatl: from ‘There is no drink as sweet and fragrant as this’ to ‘eat your meal!’

Authors

  • José Antonio Flores Farfán Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v5i2.181

Keywords:

Nahuatl conversational and ritual discourse, discourse markers, Nahuatl (internal) linguistic variability, social linguistic competence in (Balsas) Nahuatl, Nahuatl contact and purism

Abstract

Linked to a series of sociolinguistic differentials (e.g. power, cultural, conversational) materialized in specific linguistic phenomena, this paper analyzes a couple of discourse markers in Nahuatl linguistics; namely, the presence/absence of epenthetic /i/, its metathesis, and the marked use of pronominal prefixes. All these resources indexicalize different discourse genres and types of interaction together with different social positions in ritual and conversational discourse. Epenthetic /i/ has mostly been described as an obligatory segment to maintain the structure of the Nahuatl syllable, which according to existent grammatical descriptions does not allow consonant clusters. Yet as documented by this and other few works this restriction only holds for written discourse. As an overall trend, in actual oral practice the presence or absence of epenthetic /i/ manifests two different types of discourse, ranging from a highly formal (i.e. ritual) to an informal (i.e. extemporaneous) discourse. Metathesis of epenthetic /i/ is also interpreted by speakers as a marked choice towards a Nahuatl de iksaan, “ancient Nahuatl”, especially with the imperative, xi-/ ix-, whereas its deletion is conceived as the unmarked choice indexing more conversational, informal (referential or not) practices. Regarding pronouns, the shift between the first person singular bound morphemes ni- to the second person singular ti-, while addressing a second person singular, mits-, which from an external point of view could be thought as ungrammatical, also indexes different interactional treatments and power differentials, such as those concomitant to generational, gender differences and different types of discourse and interaction. All this is succinctly analyzed in this paper for the first time, theoretically advancing an interpretation that goes beyond quantitative paradigms in sociolinguistics, postulating more than, for example, an audience oriented (Bell 1984) a conversational and power approach to the variable use of language, particularly in the case of Nahuatl.

Author Biography

  • José Antonio Flores Farfán, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS)
    José Antonio Flores Farfán is professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), one of the leading institutions in these fields in Mexico. His fields of interests include a wide range of topics, encompassing Nahuatl (socio) linguistics, missionary linguistics, discourse analysis, documentation and archiving indigenous languages, educational linguistics, especially the field of language revitalization, together with the production of a series of intercultural materials for a general public. He has published widely in these fields of interest. He coordinates the Mexican Indigenous Archive at CIESAS and Lingua Pax in Latin America.

Published

2012-07-25

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Farfán, J. A. F. (2012). Ritual and conversational discourse in Nahuatl: from ‘There is no drink as sweet and fragrant as this’ to ‘eat your meal!’. Sociolinguistic Studies, 5(2), 181-199. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v5i2.181