Drunken speech and the construction of meaning

Bilingual competence in the Southern Peruvian Andes

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2860889
AutoresPenelope M Harvey, Penny Harvey (0000-0001-7765-1221, University of Liverpool, autor de correspondencia)
Año1991
Volumen20
Número1
Páginas1-36
Fecha de publicación1991-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404500016055
OpenAlexW1970458976
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas43
Referencias citadas36

This article examines the language use of drunken speakers in a bilingual community of the Southern Peruvian Andes. When drunk, speakers are less constrained in their linguistic choices by considerations of individual linguistic competence and of differential status between speaker and addressees. Cultural norms of heightened potency and diminished responsibility allow drunken speakers to extend their linguistic repertoires and to challenge established social relations. Spanish and Quechua carry very complex and ambiguous meanings related to local conceptions of power and evaluations of an Hispanic and a pre-Hispanic past. Drunks exploit the ambiguities in implicit social meanings that normally function to maintain the status quo as they use their extended communicative competence to present alternative views on the nature of social relations. (Bilingualism, language and power, social anthropology, South America

Competence (human resources) · Linguistic competence · Linguistics · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Sociology · Speech community · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology