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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2021

5 ¡Madre mía de mi alma!: Pragmalinguistic variation and gender differences in perception of piropos in Badajoz, Spain

From the book New Directions in Second Language Pragmatics

  • Enrique Rodríguez

Abstract

Piropos are a discourse practice in Spanish-speaking communities which consists of unsolicited flirtatious remarks, traditionally said by men to women in a public setting in the past. However, progressive global and regional movements in recent years critical of traditional gender roles and gender discrimination seem to be influencing the way piropos are produced and perceived by speakers across different Spanish-speaking speech communities. The present study analyzes pragmalinguistic and gender differences in perception of piropos in the speech community of Badajoz, Spain. Results indicate that whphrasal exclamatives and vocatives are preferred in contexts of higher social distance between interlocutors, while more intimate settings yield linguistic patterns that resemble other types of compliments in Spanish. In terms of gender differences in perception, men rated piropos more favorably than women, but all participants perceived those piropos that are structurally similar to other compliment types in Spanish as the most appropriate.

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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