No me banco la gente así. Un estudio comparativo del uso de palabras coloquiales y malsonantes en conversaciones informales en tres comunidades de habla hispanohablantes

Abstract

The present article aims at describing and comparing the use of slang words and swearwords in teenage talk from three different Spanish speaking communities. The analysis builds on spontaneous teenage conversations from the corpus of teenage language Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente (COLA). This corpus contains informal conversations from Madrid, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile; and for this study one conversation from each city has been selected. The aim of the analysis is twofold, in the first place to describe and compare the slang words and swearwords registered in the three conversations, and secondly to study the pragmatic functions of these words. The analysis of the slang words shows that there is variation in the informal words and expressions used in the three communities, and that these expressions seem to be mostly regional. Regarding the swearwords used, there are similarities in the three communities. There are also similarities in the pragmatic functions of the slang words and swearwords in context. The conclusions that can be drawn from the analysis, is that the Spanish speaking communities have a common system regarding how the slang words are used, but each community uses their creativity in developing words and expressions. For swearwords, the system and the words used are more similar, which might indicate that the communities share the cultural aspects that are reflected in the swearwords.