‘ ¡Quién fuera noche para caerle encima!’ Piropos in Chile: Sexual harassment or flirtation?
Journal: Sociolinguistic Studies
Subject Areas: Gender Studies Linguistics
DOI: 10.1558/sols.26731
Abstract:
Piropos, a type of flirtatious street talk, are a discourse practice that social movements against street harassment in Chile have condemned for their male chauvinist and sexist content. This paper analyzes the structure of piropos to see their effects in both the way piropos portray women, and the discourse piropos promote and/or maintain towards women. From a compendium (Memoria chilena, 2008), 67 piropos were selected and grouped based on the conceptual metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003) they use to represent women in society. Conceptual metaphors represented women as religious entities, food, criminals or offenders, and objects found in nature. A fifth metaphor included under the label ‘transfiguration’ represents the objectification of the one uttering the piropo in order to get closer to the receiver of this discourse practice. The methodology considered (1) power and social distance (Poynton, 1989; Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1992) to understand the relationship between the participants of this practice, and (2) transitivity (Halliday, 2014) to understand how lexical choices of both processes and participants reflect how human experience is expressed. The analysis revealed that the piropos analyzed use several resources to perpetuate a male chauvinist discourse that objectifies women and considers them as inferior and, generally, powerless.
Author: Erika Abarca Millán
References :
Achugar, M. (2001) Piropos as metaphors for gender roles in Spanish speaking cultures. Pragmatics 11(2): 127–137. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.11.2.02ach
Achugar, M. (2002) Piropos: cambios en la valoración del grado de cortesía de una práctica discursiva. In M. E. Placencia and D. Bravo (eds) Actos de habla y cortesía en español 175–192.Munich: Lincom Europa.
De Barbieri, T. (1992) Sobre la categoría género. Una introducción teórico metodológica. Revista Interamericana de Sociología 2(2–3): 147–178.
Emol (online newspaper El Mercurio, Chile) (January, 2014) Surge grupo chileno contra el acoso callejero y los piropos. Retrieved from http://www.emol.com/noticias/Tendencias/2014/02/02/739893/Surge-grupo-chileno-contra-el-acoso-callejero-y-los-piropos.html.
Ghio, E. and Fernández, M. D. (2005) Manual de lingüística sistémico funcional: el enfoque de M. A. K. Halliday y R. Hasan. Aplicaciones a la lengua española. Argentina: Universidad Nacional del Litoral.
Gómez de Ivashevski, A. (1969) Lenguaje coloquial venezolano. Madrid: Gredos.
González, C. M. (2009) ‘Si así eres a rayas cómo serás en pelotas’: piropos y antipiropos caraqueños. Caracas: Fundación para la Cultura Urbana.
Guioteca (2012) Los mejores piropos para las mujeres, ¿cuál es el tuyo? Retrieved from: http://www.guioteca.com/hombres/los-mejores-piropos-para-las-mujeres-¿cual-es-el-tuyo/
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as a social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. (2014) Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). Christian M. I. M. Matthiessien (ed.). New York: Routledge.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, K. (1992) Les interactions verbales. Volume 2. Paris: Armand Colin.
Ibacache, C. R. (1986) Evolución del lenguaje galante. Chillán: Colegio Concepción. As cited in Memoria chilena (2008). Retrieved from http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/articles-122883_recurso_2.pdf.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (2003) Metaphors we live by (2nd ed.). London: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226470993.001.0001
Lipski, J. M. (1994) Latin American Spanish. London: Longman.
Memoria chilena (2008) ¿Quién fuera? Retrieved from http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/articles-122883_recurso_2.pdf.
Moore, Z. (1996) Teaching culture: A study of piropos. Hispania 79(1): 113–120. https://doi.org/10.2307/345624
Moreno Fernández, F. (dir.) (2010) Catálogo de voces hispánicas, Chile. In F. Moreno Fernández (dir.) Catálogo de voces hispánicas (With collaboration from Jairo Javier García Sánchez). Madrid: Instituto Cervantes, Centro Virtual Cervantes. Retrieved from http://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/voces_hispanicas/chile/casablanca.htm.
Neruda, P. (2003) Twenty love songs and a song of despair. Translated from Spanish by W. S. Merwin (Dual language). New York: Penguin Classics.
OCAC (Observatorio contra el Acoso Callejero en Chile) (2014) Primera encuesta de acoso callejero en Chile: informe de resultados. Retrieved from http://www.ocacchile.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Informe-Encuesta-de-Acoso-Callejero-2014-OCAC-Chile.pdf.
Poynton, C. M. (1989) Language and gender: Making the difference (2nd ed; 1st ed., 1985). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
RAE (Real Academia Española de la lengua) (2014) Diccionario de la lengua española. (Online version of the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of the Language, 23rd ed.) Entry: Piropo. Retrieved from http://dle.rae.es/?w=piropo&o=h.
Schreier, J. (2005) Quién fuera mecánico…: un estudio sociopragmático sobre la aceptación social del piropo. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 3(5): 65–78.
Torrejón, A. (1991) Fórmulas de tratamiento de segunda persona singular en el español de Chile. Hispania 74(4): 1068–1076. https://doi.org/10.2307/343770