Metonymy through motosidad

The textual recording of Andean bilingualism and its use for the Latin American testimonial narrative

Bibliographic Data

ID8133104
AuthorsAndrew Robertson (0000-0002-0086-0524), A G Robertson (corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume35
Issue1
Pages1-20
Publication date2026-03-03
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2025.2582007
OpenAlexW7133899252
LanguageEN
References cited15

This article offers an exploration of the textual recording of bilingualism, and the use of stylised language, for Latin American testimonial narratives. Testimonio is a form of writing through which subaltern subjects narrate lived experiences of marginalisation. These published stories begin as oral accounts, and therefore features of the subject’s dialect, sociolect or inter-language variety are often prominent in the final, textual version. In this article, the Quechua-influenced second-language form of Spanish known as castellano motoso is used as a framework through which Enrique Encinas’s published account of revolution and trade unionism in Jinapuni (1989) is analysed. Existing scholarship on castellano motoso is utilised to demonstrate the presence of the language form in Jinapuni’s text. Subsequently, the implication of the presence of this form of language in the narrative will be gauged; the article contends that the inclusion of elements of speech indicative of a politically charged form of language is a key to testimonio fulfilling its functions of poeticism and metonymy.

Latin Americans · Metonymy · Narrative · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Testimonial · Latin American history and culture · Migration, Education, Indigenous Social Dynamics · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies

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