An Analysis of the Pragmatic Functions of Hispanicisms in Hemingway’s "Death in the Afternoon"

Authors

  • José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo University of Alicante

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4515

Keywords:

Hispanicisms, pragmatic functions, lexical borrowing, codeswitching, travel writing, Hemingway

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the pragmatic functions of the Spanishinduced loanwords, or hispanicisms, used in the novel Death in the Afternoon by Hemingway. These borrowed words have been manually extracted and through the software kit AntConc, each occurrence or word token was examined to determine the prevalent pragmatic motivation in each text string: ‘ideational’, ‘expressive’ or ‘textual’. Findings suggest that unadapted borrowings are most widespread, and the vast majority of them correspond to ideationally or referentially motivated loanwords. The assimilation of new referents (i.e., nonexistent in English cultural frames), particularly those related with bullfighting jargon, is linked to the general stylistics of travelogues. Expressive and interpersonal motivations are less frequent, but they might reflect the vernacularization of travel writing and the extended use of euphemisms through lexical borrowing. Alternatively, textual motivations are regularly found through the use of synomyms, co-hyponyms and paraphrases, which are intended to ensure text clarity and coherence.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo, University of Alicante

José A. Sánchez Fajardo received his PhD in English Linguistics from the University of Alicante, where he is currently a lecturer. His research interests include Morphology, Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics. His latest publications revolve around the phenomena of morphological pejoration and linguistic borrowing.

References

Appel, R. and P. Muysken. 2005. Language Contact and Bilingualism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Anderson, T. K. and A. J. Toribio. 2007. “Attitudes towards lexical borrowing and intra-sentential code-switching among Spanish-English bilinguals.” Spanish in Context 4(2): 217-240.

Baker, Ch. 2016. “Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon and the Fear of Death in War.” War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 26: 1-19.

Benson, J. J., ed. 1998. New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Duke University Press.

Bloom, H., ed. 2005. Ernest Hemingway: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.

Bookless, T. E. 1982. “Towards a Semantic Description of English Loan-Words in Spanish”. Quillquereme 5 (2): 170-185.

Bullock, B. and A. J. Toribio. 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Connolly, C. 1983. Enemies of promise. The University of Chicago Press.

Crespo-Fernández, E. and C. Luján-García. 2018. Anglicismos sexuales en español. El inglés como recurso eufemístico y disfemístico en la comunicación virtual. Granada: Comares.

Daulton, F. E. 2019. “Lexical borrowing”. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Ed. C. Chapelle. London: Blackwell Publishing.

del Gizzo, S. and K. Curnutt, eds. 2020. The New Hemingway Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

DLE23. Real Academia Española. 2014. Diccionario de la lengua española. 23rd ed. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.

Donaldson, S., ed. 1999. The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

González Cruz, M. I. and M. P. González de la Rosa. 2006. “Language and travel: Spanish vocabulary in British travel books.” Tesserae. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 12(2-3): 203-217.

González Cruz, M. I. and M. P. González de la Rosa. 2007. “El viaje lingüístico: una aproximación sociolingüística a la literatura de viajes”. Escrituras y reescrituras del viaje. Miradas plurales a través del tiempo y de las culturas. Eds. J. M. Oliver, C. Curell, C. G. Uriarte and B. Pico. Bern: Peter Lang. 235-251.

González Cruz, M. I. 2017. “Exploring the dynamics of English/Spanish codeswitching in a written corpus.” Alicante Journal of English Studies 30: 331-355.

Grant, A. P. 2015. “Lexical borrowing”. The Oxford Handbook of the Word. Ed. J. R. Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic. London: Arnold.

Haugen, E. 1956. “Bilingualism in the Americas: A bibliography and research guide”. Publications of the American Dialect Society 26. University of Alabama Press.

Hemingway, E. 1996 (1932). Death in the Afternoon. New York: Touchstone.

Hoffer, B. 2002. “Language borrowing and language diffusion: An overview.” Intercultural Communication Studies 11(4): 1-37.

Jakobson, R. 1960. “Linguistics and poetics.” Style in Language. Ed. T. Sebeok. Cambridge (Mass.): M. I. T. Press. 350–377.

Kinnamon, K. 1959. “Hemingway, the Corrida, and Spain.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language: 44-61.

Lewis, R. W. 1984. “The Making of Death in the Afternoon”. Ernest Hemingway: The Writer in Context. Ed. J. Nagel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 31-52.

Mandel, M. 2002. Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon: The Complete Annotations. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.

McCormick, J. 1998. Bullfighting: Art, Technique, and Spanish Society. New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.): Transaction Publishers.

Mechaan-Jones, S. 2011. “Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie”. Code-switching in early English. Eds. H. Schendl and L. Wright. 253-280.

Messent, P. 2004. “’The Real Thing’? Representing the Bullfight and Spain in Death in the Afternoon.” A Companion to Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon. Ed. M. Mandel. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 123-142.

Mewshaw, M. 2005. “Travel, travel writing and the literature of travel”. South Central Review 22 (2): 2-10.

Montes-Alcalá, C. 2012. “Code-switching in US Latino novels.” Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing: Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse Ed. M. Sebba, S. Mahootian and C. Jonsson. London and New York: Routledge. 68-88.

Montes-Alcalá, C. 2015. “Code-switching in US Latino Literature: The role of biculturalism”. Language and Literature 24(3): 264-281.

MWD11. Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, available at https://www.merriam-webster.com [last access: 10.01.2020].

Poplack, S. 1983. “Lenguas en contacto”. Introducción a la lingüística actual. Ed. H. López Morales. Madrid: Playor. 183–207.

Poplack, S. and M. Meechan 1995. “Patterns of Language Mixture: nominal structure in Wolof-Frenchand Fongbe- French bilingual discourse”. One Speaker-Two languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code Switching. Eds. L. Milroy and P. Muysken. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 199-232.

Pulcini, V., Furiassi, C. and F. Rodríguez González. 2012. “The lexical influence of English on European languages. From words to phraseology”. The Anglicization of European Lexis. Eds. C. Furiassi, V. Pulcini and F. Rodríguez González. Amsterdam and Filadelfia: John Benjamins.

Rodríguez González, F. 1996. “Functions of Anglicisms in Contemporary Spanish.” Cahier de Lexicologie 68(1): 107-128.

Sánchez Fajardo, J. A. 2018. The pragmalinguistic dimensions of cultural borrowing. International Journal of Language and Culture 5(1): 112-129.

Silva-Corvalán, C. 2001. Sociolingüística y pragmática del español. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Stanton, E. F. 2005. “Of Bulls and Men”. Ernest Hemingway: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Ed. H. Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. 109-142.

Stewart, M. 2001. Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time. New York: Camden House.

Trogdon, R. W. 2020. “Hemingway and Textual Studies”. The New Hemingway Studies. Eds. S. del Gizzo and K. Curnutt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, E. 1939. “Hemingway: Gauge of Morale”. The Atlantic Monthly 164: 36-46.

Zentella, A. C. 1997. Growing up Bilingual. Puerto Rican Children in New York. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Downloads

Published

22-12-2021

How to Cite

Sánchez Fajardo, J. A. (2021). An Analysis of the Pragmatic Functions of Hispanicisms in Hemingway’s "Death in the Afternoon". Journal of English Studies, 19, 143–169. https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4515

Issue

Section

Articles