Stylistics in Use PDF

Stylistics in Use
Stylistics in Use
Edited by
Pablo Ruano San Segundo

and Guadalupe Nieto Caballero
Stylistics in Use
Edited by Pablo Ruano San Segundo and Guadalupe Nieto Caballero
This book first published 2016
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2016 by Pablo Ruano San Segundo,

Guadalupe Nieto Caballero and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-9440-0

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9440-1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures............................................................................................ vii
List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix
Introduction ................................................................................................ xi
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1

“But Me No Buts”: Allusion, Intertextuality, and Other Things Corpora
Can't See
Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 29

The Vulgar on Stage: The Enregisterment of 18th Century Cant Language
Paula Schintu Martínez
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 47

Biblical Types and Archetypes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Luis Javier Conejero Magro
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 61

Analysis of the Use of Wellerisms in The Simpsons and the Strategies
for their Translation into Spanish
Luis J. Tosina Fernández
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 79

El habla popular en la literatura del primer tercio del siglo XX: el ejemplo
de Extremadura
Guadalupe Nieto Caballero
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 99

Dos gacelas bajo un mismo árbol. Variaciones estilísticas de arraigo
y desarraigo en la obra poética de Dámaso Alonso
Antonio Rivero Machina
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 115

Análisis del discurso sobre la alteridad étnico-racial en la literatura
española contemporánea
Christophe Emmanuel Séka
Contributors ............................................................................................. 133

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1-1. Results from the British National Corpus ................................. 5

Figure 1-2. Results from the Corpus of Contemporary American English .. 6
Figure 1-3. Examples of “but me no buts” in the Corpus of Historical
American English ................................................................................. 7
Figure 1-4. Results from the Google Books Corpus ................................. 10
Figure 1-5. Spelling discrepancies for the same search terms .................. 12
Figure 1-6. Five different editions of the same work make the number
of results increase by fivefold ............................................................. 13
Figure 1-7. Contextual menu for the concordance line “Clerk me no
clerks” on the Synchronic English Web Corpus ................................. 16

LIST OF TABLES
1-1. Novel forms of the phrase frame found through web search of random
word combinations (letter “b”) ........................................................... 18
1-2. Instances of the “* me no *s” phrase frame recorded by Bartlett
(1905), Potter (1915), and Cooper (1916) ........................................... 24
2-1. Most relevant semantic fields in the corpus ...................................... 40
2-2. Most recurrent canting terms in the corpus ....................................... 41
7-1. Nombres usados con mayor frecuencia para referirse a los otros
africanos ............................................................................................ 117

INTRODUCTION
Stylistics in Use is composed of a series of studies about various trends in

stylistics. More specifically, its seven chapters analyse, from varied
perspectives, literary aspects on the Internet, on television and in literary
works. To do so, different approaches have been adopted, such as corpus-
driven analysis, translation studies, phraseology, discourse analysis and
sociolinguistic approaches, among others. The aim of the book is first and
foremost to bring stylistic analyses closer together, thus demonstrating the
potential of stylistics as a research area that can benefit from other
disciplines and proving its effectiveness in examining literary aspects in
literary texts as well as in other mediums. In this regard, we hope that this
book will be of interest to a wide academic readership, including not only
stylisticians but also those doing corpus analysis, translation studies,
phraseology, discourse analysis or sociolinguistics. Finally, we hope that
stylisticians in general will be interested in applying some of the analytical
methods to other literary analyses to test their efficacy and thus
demonstrate the replicability of the studies comprising this book.
Pablo Ruano San Segundo

CHAPTER ONE
“BUT ME NO BUTS”:
ALLUSION, INTERTEXTUALITY,
AND OTHER THINGS CORPORA CAN’T SEE
GUSTAVO A. RODRÍGUEZ MARTÍN
1. Introduction
The history of literary language in English is filled with popular
catchphrases. Some of them epitomize the idiolect of a particular fictional
character for posterity (e.g., “I would prefer not to”) whereas others
transcend individual works and become widespread in the literary canon of
a specific period. For instance, many Elizabethan plays written around
1590 include “paucis pallabris” or a variation thereof1—a phrase that
constitutes one of the earliest recorded examples of systematic
intertextuality in secular texts. Some other popular literary phrases, however,
do not comprise a fixed set of words, but rather a syntactic structure that
becomes very productive by virtue of paradigmatic substitution. In other
words, one is looking at a phraseological unit that is actualized for stylistic
purposes by changing one or more of its constituents.
These multi-word sequences containing one or more free slots are often
referred to in the field of phraseology as a “collocational frameworks”
(Renouf and Sinclair 1991, 128) or “phrase frames” (Stubbs 2007).2 In the

1
See, for example, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (In.i.5, “paucas
pallabris”) and Much Ado About Nothing (III.v.16, simply “palabras”), and Kyd’s
The Spanish Tragedy (III.xiv.118 “pocas palabras”).
2
Although terminological disputes are beyond the scope of this essay, “phrase
frame” will be the term of choice henceforth because the definition for
“collocational framework” specifies that it is “a discontinuous sequence of two
words, positioned at one word remove from each other.” Evidently, “X me no Xs”
meets neither criterion.
2 Chapter One
case in point, as we shall see, the phrase frame “* me no *s”3 may result in
concrete realizations such as “but me no buts,” “diamond me no
diamonds” or “virgin me no virgins”—to name but a few.
As the title of this chapter suggests, “but me no buts” is the most
popular realization of the “* me no *s” phrase frame. Indeed, it is the only
formulation of it that has made its way into the phrasicon (i.e., the whole
catalogue of conventionalized phraseological units in a language). Thus, it
is recorded in several phraseological dictionaries.4 In this regard, “but me
no buts” can be classified as what Gläser (1986b; 2001) calls “quotations
and winged words”—that is, propositions (sentence-like phraseological
units) that are commonly known and can be traced back to a known
source, even if the meaning and pragmatic use of the expression no longer
correspond to that of its original source. In the case of “but me no buts,”
its first recorded use is to be found in Susanna Centlivre’s The Busie Body
(1708), although several sources claim5 that it was its use in Scott’s The
Antiquary (1816) that popularized it. In fact, it has become so widespread
as a stereotypical formulation that it is often misattributed to Shakespeare.6
This particular expression of the frame, however, is by no means the
only documented use. As noted above—and within literary language
alone—we can list many other examples, such as “clerk me no clerks” or
“front me no fronts.” Such has been the popularity of this phrase frame as
a source of literary creativity that some early studies attempted to compile
a catalogue of the existing instances of this manifestation of
intertextuality. John Bartlett (1905, 861), for example, enumerates
nineteen different realizations of “* me no *s” from literary works dated
anywhere between the Elizabethan period and the 19th century (see
Appendix A). Soon after this, Potter (1915) set out to expand Bartlett´s
records in a short paper exclusively dedicated to listing further examples
of the same phrase frame. He compiles another fifteen examples of the “*
me no *s” pattern (see Appendix A) and finds new occurrences of
Bartlett’s examples in different works of literature. It is also worthy of
remark that he notes for the first time that “this locution” also “crops up in
contemporary writers.” A year after Potter’s note, Cooper (1916)
submitted to the same publication an addendum to the former’s collection.
It supplies a further 33 examples (Appendix A), for one of which he
admits the references to be lacking. All the examples that Cooper

3
We follow the convention of utilizing an asterisk (*) to denote a free slot in a
string of text where any word may be used in its stead.
4
See, for example, Kumar (1998), Jewell (2002) or Manser (2006).
5
See, for example, Partridge (2005 [1940], 58) and Stevenson (1948, 1218)
6
See Bernard Levin (1983), as quoted in Wells and Shaw (2005 [1998], 82).
“But Me No Buts” 3
enumerates are once again taken from works of literature, the majority of
which are late Tudor and Restoration drama. He does not seem to have
read Bartlett’s book, however, or he would have noticed that some of the
“new” examples he records had already been listed by Bartlett. In all, the
popularity of this phrase frame as a literary device is well attested, to the
extent that it is sometimes used to illustrate lexical creativity, word
formation, and other linguistic phenomena.7
A superficial glance at the examples recorded by the authors cited
above seems to suggest that “* me no *s” has been especially productive
roughly during the 250 years between the late 16th century and the first
half of the 19th century, with some occasional later occurrences. Other than
this, there is very little that can be derived from the data available in
earlier studies, and there is no evidence to suggest that this phrase frame is
used regularly outside literary discourse. However, it is my contention in
this chapter that this particular phrase frame is a ubiquitous stylistic device
in other genres and registers (e.g. journalism and colloquial web genres).
Also, other potentially relevant circumstances in the distribution and use
of this frame are also to be explored: geographical, chronological, social.
In order to gauge whether and to what extent these elements are germane
to this research, the analysis draws in the main from a corpus-based
methodology. In addition, the data from the different corpora available is
presented with a purpose that goes beyond the primary research objective
stated before. Indeed, as we shall see, one of the reasons why so little data
is available has to do with the limitations of the corpora at our disposal.
Therefore, in this study we not only analyze a particular phrase frame from
the point of view of corpus-based phraseo-stylistics,8 but we also try to
overcome the restrictions imposed by corpora that were not compiled—
and neither were their search interfaces—with these phenomena in mind.
Thus, as a derived objective, we set out to mark the most relevant
methodological caveats for future research on this or related questions.
2. Corpus Data: An Overview

This section presents the data from the different corpora that have been
consulted and provides critical feedback on the—sometimes insurmountable
—obstacles that those corpora pose for the analysis of the “* me no *s”
frame. At the outset of each subsection, the specific corpus is briefly

7
See, for example, Crystal (2005a; 2005b; 2007).
8
See Gläser (1986b) and related research on the wake of her paper, like Oncins-
Martínez (2005).
4 Chapter One
described in terms of its composition and, hence, its scope.

Before the analysis of the data proper, it seems convenient to outline
the technical details of the search parameters in all the corpora for, as they
are practically identical, they may be mentioned here and frame the whole
section. In specific terms, the query was always either “* me no *s” or
“me no *s,” depending on whether the corpus interface allowed for one or
two wildcard signs. As the * wildcard stands for any letter combination
(word) but they need not be identical when more than one is used, many of
the results were irrelevant for this study. Among the irrelevant items that
were retrieved, some of the most frequent include “asked me no questions,”
“tells me no lies,” and “gave me no problems”—or variations thereof. All
these were ignored, and only those results where the original frame is
recognizable have been taken into consideration. This does not mean that the
retrieved words occupying the place of each asterisk wildcard must be the
same, but they must have an obvious lexical connection. Such is the case, as
we shall see, of “behoove me no ill-behooves.” This adjustment is only
natural if we consider that the examples listed by Bartlett, Potter, and
Cooper also include some cases where the first and second replaceable
element in the frame are cognates or derivatives, not the same word (i.e.,
“leave me no leaving” or “confer me no conferrings”).
2.1. British National Corpus (BNC)

The British National Corpus9 contains 100 million words from
different sources. It is “designed to represent a wide cross-section of
British English, both spoken and written, from the late twentieth century,”
specifically from the early 80s to the mid-90s. Detailed technical data (text
types, number of words) are available on their website.10
The search query “* me no *s” retrieves only 9 results from the BNC
(Figure 1-1), and only two of those are relevant for the present study, namely
“diamond me no diamonds” and “wonder me no wonders.” Although both of
them are novel occurrences in that they do not come from any of the sources
cited in Appendix A, “diamond me no diamonds” was already used by
Tennyson. At any rate, both examples belong to literary works11 (novels) and
as such, they are still confined to the same type of discourse.

9
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk.
10
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/index.xml?ID=numbers.
11
“Wonder me no wonders” is from Alistair MacLean’s Santorini and “Diamond
me no diamonds” from Pamela Haines’s The diamond waterfall. The publication
details of the editions of literary works in all the corpora can be consulted by
displaying the contextual menu of each result.
Figure 1-1. Results from the British National Corpus
2.2. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
In this case we have a larger text sample at our disposal (450 million
words) from a different geographical source (United States) and, perhaps
most importantly, it has undergone regular updates so that at present it
comprises texts from 1990 to 2015.12 The Corpus of Contemporary
American English retrieves 44 raw results for the query “* me no *s”—a
figure that is proportionally larger than what is to be expected by
comparison with the size of the BNC. The number of relevant results,
however, is also rather small at 3 (Figure 1-2). All three instances of the
phrase frame in question belong to literary works,13 and only two of them
had not been recorded previously “name me no names” and “behoove me
no ill-behooves.” The third one is another utilization of the popular “but
me no buts.”
Once again, neither the distribution nor the frequency of the results
suggests that there has been any change in the use of the phrase frame
primarily as a restricted stylistic device in literary genres.

12
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.
13
“Name me no names” is from Cynthia Ozick’s collection of short stories
Dictation: A Quartet and “but me no buts” was retrieved from Tobias Wolff’s This
Boy’s Life. The case of “behoove me no ill-behooves” is rather tricky, because it
belongs to the movie script of The Bonfire of the Vanities, but it does not appear in
the text of the original novel.
6 Chapter One
Figure 1-2. Results from the Corpus of Contemporary American

English
2.3. Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)

This corpus represents a contrast with the other two that have been
discussed thus far because it has a much wider chronological scope while
it still covers contemporary English (1810-2009)—albeit within the
geographical sphere of North America.14 The data from this corpus was
expected to shed some light on the evolution in the use of this phrase
frame and provide evidence to explain the scanty data in other, exclusively
contemporary, corpora.
At first sight, the Corpus of Historical American English produces
what seems like a very promising number of unrefined results (242 tokens
in 147 separate formulations), despite a comparatively small number of
words (400 million). A closer look at the data reveals that only 18
examples match the phrase frame analyzed here, but with only 8 separate,
relevant wordings. Out of those, “but me no buts” is by far the most
frequent (11 occurrences) and, as Figure 1-3 shows, all of them belong to
works of fiction—some of which are duplicated in the corpus.
Among the other seven examples, each of which has only one
occurrence, we cannot find a single case that is used outside literary
language. Perhaps more significantly, the vast majority belong to novels
published in the 19th century and the most recent example dates from
1969.15 This would seem to corroborate the notion that this phrase frame is

14
http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/.
15
The list of phrases and works is the following (in chronological order of
publication): “Lord me no lords” (John Bray, The Tooth-Ache, 1814), “dear me no
rare, if not practically obsolete, in contemporary language. In addition, the

claim that the stylistic exploitation of this structure is productive and, as
such, creative, is put into question by the fact that previously recorded
examples recur; e.g., “diamond me no diamonds” or “lord me no lords,”
apart from the strongly lexicalized “but me no buts.”
Figure 1-3. Examples of “but me no buts” in the Corpus of Historical

American English
2.4. Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE)

The queries up to this point have yielded no remarkable data either
historically or in contemporary English for Britain and the USA. In this
regard, the Corpus of Global Web-Based English16 is the most appropriate
yardstick to gauge whether the scarcity of relevant data has to do with the
varieties of English under scrutiny. In the case in question, the GloWbe
contains over 1.9 billion words from twenty English-speaking countries—
regardless of the status of English in that country (official, assistant)—
from Canada to Australia, from Nigeria to Singapore. Additionally, the
fact that all the texts in the corpus are web-based guarantees a certain
deviation from literary genres, at the same time that it theoretically
restricts the chronological range of the corpus. Indeed, as the information

dears” (Richard H. Dana, Poems and Prose Writings, 1833), “brother me no
brothers” (William G. Simms, The Kinsmen; or, The Black Riders of Congaree,
1841), “beggar-maid me no beggar-maids!” (Frances H. Burnett, Vagabondia
1884, 1884), “diamond me no diamonds” (George Washington Cable, Bonaventure
A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana, 1888), “fellow me no fellows” (Owen
Davis, Robin Hood or the Merry Outlaws of Sherwood Forest, 1923), and “Jew me
no Jews” (Ivan Gold, Sick Friends, 1969).
16
http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/.
8 Chapter One
available on their website states, “the web pages were collected in

December 2012.” Although this does not presuppose that all the words
compiled from each web page date from that period, the use of two genre
labels (“blog” and “general,” based on the Google search options with
which they performed the searches for their corpus material) at least
implies that the majority of the text in the blog category is likely to be
contemporary.
Despite the geographical diversity and the abundant text sample, the
results from GloWbE are disheartening and, as we shall see, even
misleading. The custom search terms retrieve 272 total occurrences of 167
different phrases that fit the “* me no *s” frame. The country whose data
contains the most results is the USA (79), whereas four countries
contribute only two examples (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Kenya, and
Tanzania). Out of all these results, however, only 8 tokens are relevant—
four of which correspond to the proverbial “but me no buts.” Indeed, the
phraseological status of this expression is so well-established that one of
the instances found in this corpus may be deemed a creative modification
of it (“butt me no butts,” in an Australian sport article). Other than these
two cases, the other three different renditions of this phrase frame are
“clerk me no clerks” (India), “Flaubert me no Flauberts,” and “plan me no
plans” (both from the USA).
Although the data are limited, there are three aspects that are worth
noting here. The first two have to do with the usual deviation of the results
from the hypothesis suggested in our research question; that is to say, that
the majority of the cases are forms that had already been recorded (“but
me no buts” getting the lion’s share) and that practically all the pertinent
examples are to be found in literary texts or in related genres (movie
scripts, literary criticism) with a single interesting yet inconsequential
exception in sport journalism.
The third aspect that necessitates further commentary is of methodological
nature, however, and exposes the problematic nature of corpus compilation
and design.17 As stated before, one of the valid examples (“clerk me no
clerks”) is listed under the country heading of India. The phrase in
question, paradoxically, was extracted from the text of Walter Scott’s

17
The methodological challenges of corpus compilation and corpus design have
received scholarly attention from the very inception of the modern concept of text
corpus. Issues include the geographical variety to be studied (e.g., Douglas 2003),
the level of linguistic phenomenology under scrutiny (e.g., Leitner 1992), the types
of text to be compiled (e.g., Hundt et al. 2007), and representativeness (e.g., Biber
2015), just to mention a few. This chapter simply provides a few modest
observations that may result in valuable feedback for corpus designers.
Ivanhoe—it is in fact the same example that Bartlett records (see

Appendix A). The explanation behind this geographical conundrum is a
mystery to the author: the web-based text that was selected for the corpus
is Chapter 20 of the digitized version of Ivanhoe hosted by The Literature
Network (http://www.online-literature.com/). Why this should be
considered a text from India is not at all clear, because there is no
indication in the digitized text that it is the reproduction of an edition
published in India,18 and the publisher of the site that stores the digitized
text is Jalic Incorporated (http://www.jalic.com/), “an Internet company
located in East Lansing, Michigan, USA.” Whatever the case may be, and
even if the text had either been published in India or was hosted by a
website with an Indian IP, classifying the text of Scott’s novel as if it
represented the English written or spoken in India is a serious blunder.
Furthermore, the consequences of this distortion can be disastrous for a
large-scale study in which the size of the sample is too large to inspect
each individual result and discard these erroneously attributed texts.
Finally, this misrepresented example also points to another element that
may detract from the validity of the results obtained from this corpus.
Namely, one should not take the label “web-based” as a guarantee that the
texts in the corpus exemplify contemporary English. As we have been able
to observe, the digitized text of a 19th-century novel counts as 21st-
century prose if it has been uploaded in 2012; and a preliminary
examination attests to the remarkable number of parallel cases.19
2.5. Google Books Corpus

Given that—up to this point—practically all the examples have been
retrieved from literary works, the data in this corpus would be expected to
provide an exhaustive list of all the occurrences and different forms of the
“* me no *s” phrase frame in literary texts. This, in turn, would at least be
a sound starting point in order to assess the degree of creativity in the
different formulations of the frame over time. The numbers seem to
buttress this notion, for the Google Books Corpus, as the description in its

18
There has been a relatively recent edition published in Mumbai (2004, Wilco
Publishing House).
19
To quote two random test queries that were performed in order to explore this
circumstance, “Bounderby” retrieves almost 100 results, most of which are
duplicated quotations from Hard Times or fragments of the digitized text of the
novel. Also, the text of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Xanadu” is repeated four times
in the corpus.
10 Chapter One
web interface indicates,20 “allows you to search more than 200 billion
words (200,000,000,000) of data in both the American and British English
datasets.” In addition, the dataset comprises texts between the 1500s and
the 2000s; this chronological range covers contemporary usage as well as
the epoch of the earliest recorded examples in Appendix A.
The number of results (both the raw data and the relevant examples) is
larger than in any previous queries. Specifically, out of an initial batch of
93 phrase frames and more than 16,000 realizations (Figure 1-4), we are
left with 15 relevant formulations of the frame, which account for 2,669
occurrences.
Figure 1-4. Results from the Google Books Corpus
Nevertheless, all the examples have two characteristics in common

that—however foreseeable because of the nature of the corpus—once
again seem to reject our initial hypothesis that the “* me no *s” frame was
productive outside literary discourse in contemporary English. First of all,
all the results had been recorded on the initial lists compiled by Bartlett,
Potter, and Cooper (Appendix A). In addition, all of them are found in
works of literature or scholarly works that quote them for illustrative
purposes. Apart from these descriptive questions, a closer look at the data
reveals a series of flaws in the corpus—or, at least, a series of caveats that
researchers may not be aware of—that distorts the results and the
conclusions drawn from them. But before we describe the challenges
posed by the present condition of the corpus and its interface, let us look at

20
http://googlebooks.byu.edu/x.asp.
the instances one by one so that the extent of this portrayal can be
faithfully estimated quantitatively and qualitatively.
“But me no buts” is by far the most frequent realization of “* me no
*s” in the Google Books Corpus, as it occurs 998 times. When the actual
texts in the corpus are displayed, one can see that practically all the cases
fall into one of three broad categories: a) an entry in a phraseological
dictionary or a dictionary of quotations; b) the phrase in use in the relevant
work of several authors (Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron, Susanna Centlivre,
and Henry Fielding); and c) a reference to this realization of the frame in a
critical edition of a literary work as a way to illustrate another of its
formulations in that work. Occasionally, one encounters a case that has
been used in a different work of fiction,21 but the phraseological nature of
this frame and its use in well-known classical works diminishes its
potential stylistic effect.
“Thank me no thankings” (378) and “proud me no prouds” (432)
usually go together, as most of the results are from editions of Romeo and
Juliet (“Thank me no thankings nor proud me no prouds,” Act III, Sc. v).
In addition, as in the previous case, dictionaries of quotations and
scholarly publications (on Shakespeare, but also on linguistics and other
areas of study within the humanities) make up the entirety of this set of
results.
The rest of the results follows a similar pattern. The number of
occurrences is usually a combination of examples in dictionaries of
quotations and scholarly works plus the original example in different
editions of the same literary work. Thus, we find “prize me no prizes” and
“diamond me no diamonds” (145 and 157 results respectively, quoted
from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King), “petition me no petitions” (112 from
Henry Fielding’s Tom Thumb), “virgin me no virgins,” “end me no ends,”
and “cause me no causes” (111, 85, and 82 results respectively, all from
Philip Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts), “digest me no
digestions” (95 from a letter from the Count of Essex to recommend
Francis Bacon for Attorney General, edited or quoted in different
publications), “plot me no plots” (94 from Francis Beaumont’s The Knight
of the Burning Pestle), “parish me no parishes” (74 results from George
Peele’s The Old Wife’s Tale), “map me no maps” (71 results quoted
originally from Henry Fielding’s The Justice Caught in His Own Trap),

21
Such is the case of Robert Rankin’s The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the
Apocalypse and Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire: The Story of a Squad. The latter is
perhaps one of the few cases that deserves further exploration, as it is a translation
of the original French and “but me no buts” is used twice in the same passage.
12 Chapter One
“clerk me no clerks” (56 results from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe), and “vow
me no vows” (49 results from John Fletcher’s Wit Without Money).
Even if the purpose of this study were to track the use of the examples
recorded in Appendix A in the history of literary criticism, the Google
Book Corpus presents a series of problematic elements that would mar the
validity of such a study. The first of them is of technical nature. After the
initial query was performed (* me no *s), each of the relevant results was
tested in the search interface as a literal text string; i.e., I searched for “but
me no buts,” “diamond me no diamonds,” “clerk me no clerks,” and all the
other instances of the phrase frame. In doing so, I discovered that—for
reasons unknown to me—the web-based interface retrieved two different
search lines for certain formulations, one of which had a slightly altered
spelling because a random letter was capitalized (Figure 1-5). These two
different set of results did appear in the initial result list in the case of “but
me no buts/But me no buts”—albeit far apart from each other because of
the difference in number of occurrences. “Diamond me No diamonds,” on
the contrary, was absent from the first list. Thus, neither the number of
occurrences nor the distribution of the sources were initially accurate, and
these additional findings had to be added to arrive at the figures discussed
above.
Figure 1-5. Spelling discrepancies for the same search terms
The second caveat has to do with the large quantity of redundant

material; for each literary work that utilizes one of the relevant examples
Google Books stores and retrieves sometimes dozens of editions. This
increases artificially the number of examples—an issue that is more acute
when the duplicate editions are of dictionaries or of scholarly works that
record many of the specific phrase frames in a single volume. For example,
Figure 1-6. Five different editions of the same work make the number
of results increase by fivefold
the results include five different editions of Gaskell’s Compendium of

Forms: Educational, Social, Legal and Commercial (Figure 1-6), a book
that cites eighteen of these phrase frames.22 In other words, this book alone
accounts for 90 out of the grand total of 2,669 (3,37%) individual
occurrences of the phrase frame. As a consequence, not only do we find a

22
Gaskell’s manual predates Bartlett’s and, as such, it is the earliest catalogue of
examples of the “* me no *s” phrase frame I have been able to find.
14 Chapter One
sharp literary/scholarly slant in the distribution and use of the examples,

but there are also fewer instances that we many initially be led to believe.
It is worth noting here that this duplication of texts in the corpus had also
been detected in the Corpus of Historical American English, although the
significance of the phenomenon was not nearly as high.
Regardless of the methodological questions raised above, the fact
remains that there are practically no examples of novel uses of the “* me
no *s” frame beyond the cases enumerated in Appendix A. Furthermore,
the intertextual reproduction of these expressions in contemporary English
occurs almost exclusively in literary language. Up to this point there is no
evidence to suggest that these formulations may be used at present in
different genres with any frequency.
2.6 WebCorp
Perhaps the most suitable corpora for assessing whether “* me no *s”
has any prevalence outside literary language—and if such prevalence
entails some sort of creative strain—are those compiled at WebCorp.23
Initially, the WebCorp Live suite presents the ideal capabilities, for it
“allows access to the World Wide Web as a corpus—a large collection of
texts from which facts about the language can be extracted.”24 However,
after the first few queries retrieved fewer results than one would expect, I
filled in a feedback form online and received a message stating that the
“Google Search API is limited to a maximum of 64 search results.” If we
consider for a moment what 64 results represent in the larger scheme of
the whole Internet, it follows naturally that WebCorp Live cannot be used
for the present research purposes. In addition, the Google API is the only
one that allows wildcard queries (only one), so none of the others available
is of any use.
Fortunately, WebCorp also has three other digital corpora that have
been compiled by “extracting textual content from web pages.”25 These
are the Diachronic English Web Corpus26 (130 million words), the
Synchronic English Web Corpus27 (470 million words), and the
Birmingham Blog Corpus28 (630 million words). The data from these
corpora are accessible through their website and it does not depend on an

23
http://www.webcorp.org.uk/live/.
24
http://www.webcorp.org.uk/live/guide.jsp.
25
http://wse1.webcorp.org.uk/.
26
http://wse1.webcorp.org.uk/cgi-bin/DIA/index.cgi.
27
http://wse1.webcorp.org.uk/cgi-bin/SYN/index.cgi.
28
http://wse1.webcorp.org.uk/cgi-bin/BLOG/index.cgi.
external API. Although only one wildcard symbol (*) can be used per
query, this does not affect the relevance of the results or hamper the
weeding out of the irrelevant cases. Additionally, no limitations on the
number of search results exist.
The case of the Diachronic English Web Corpus deserves little
commentary. It retrieves 20 results, none of which fits the “* me no *s”
frame. Paradoxically, as we read on the main page of the corpus, it “covers
the period Jan 2000 - Dec 2010. Each month contains 1 million words.”
Once again, it seems that this phrase frame is not in current use in English.
The results from the Synchronic English Web Corpus are not much
more promising: 131 results, only three of which are relevant (two
instances of “but me no buts” and one of “clerk me no clerks”). Here, once
again, one detects a problematic methodological issue in the compilation
of the corpus: If each of these three results is analyzed individually, it is
striking to find that all of them have been extracted from different issues
of the British satirical magazine Punch.29 This poses, at least, two caveats
for researchers using WebCorp at large. First, these three texts are
obviously not from the 2000-2010 period, regardless of the date when they
were uploaded to Project Gutenberg. Thus, any chronological conclusions
based on these corpora and drawn from larger datasets must be taken with
a grain of salt, because unless each individual concordance line is checked,
there is no way of knowing whether we are looking at texts written in the
last few years. Second, on closer inspection we learn that these three
examples come from a sub-corpus called “Mini-web Sample,” described
as “339,907,995 words from 100,000 randomly selected web-pages to
form a sample of the distribution of texts throughout the web.” Although
the randomization of the sample ensures robust results—especially when
selected from such a large data source as the web, the specific information
on the precise sub-corpus and/or domain is only accessible at a glance if
the appropriate option is selected from the “Display Info” drop-down
menu. Otherwise, each concordance line must be clicked on to prompt a
contextual menu that lists that sort of information (Figure 1-7). Let this be
a technical recommendation to anyone using the WebCorp suite.

29
The first occurrence of “but me no buts” is from Vol. 1 (August 7, 1841); the
second “but me no buts” is to be found in Vol. 153 (November 7, 1917), whereas
the only instance of “clerk me no clerks” dates from March 26, 1892 (Vol. 102).
All the texts were taken from the Project Gutenberg site
(http://www.gutenberg.org/) which, by the way, stores a phenomenal digitized
collection of Punch (over 500 issues).
16 Chapter One
Figure 1-7. Contextual menu for the concordance line “Clerk me no

clerks” on the Synchronic English Web Corpus
As regards the pertinent issues for the scope of this essay, it is worthy
of note that this is the first batch of results that—despite not having a
novel formulation—are used in satirical, creative discourse outside the
domain of mainstream literature. In all, however, the chronological and
geographical limitations of the sample—not to mention its size—do not
justify any interpretation that goes beyond a stylistic oddity.
The third WebCorp corpus (Birmingham Blog Corpus) also retrieves a
sizeable set of examples (142) for the “me no *s” query, with the usual
minuscule set of relevant results (1). This case is, unsurprisingly, another
instance of “but me no buts”30 in its canonical, phraseological sense. There
are, however, two “silver linings” in this use of the frame: First, it occurs
outside literary language. In fact, it is merely found in a comment to the
original blog post—blogging being susceptible to utilizing stylistic traits
from literature. Second, one can be sure that the example was written in
2010, as indicated by the date in the heading of the comment.
3. What Corpora Can’t See

If one were to draw some tentative conclusions from the data retrieved
from the corpora studied here (containing an aggregate of more than 205
billion words), there would be no gainsaying the fact that there is no
evidence of any consistent use of the “* me no *s” phrase frame outside
literary language. Furthermore, even within literary language, there is little
evidence of any creative, novel exploitation of this frame after 1900, when
practically all the examples recorded by Bartlett, Potter, and Gaskell had

30
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/31/final-notes-on-obamas-2009/.
already been documented. After all the queries discussed throughout this
chapter, there is only one truly novel exploitation of the frame (“butt me
no butts”) and only a couple of valid examples in genres like journalism or
blogging.
In a last attempt to verify the validity and replicability of my findings
outside the corpora available, I decided to take a more inductive approach:
I set out to brainstorm for possible realizations of the phrase frame,
Google them in quotation marks so that all the search results would
include an exact match of the proposed formulation, and record them
systematically. I decided to use words that begin with the letter b only; not
because of any conscious decision, but because the starting point was the
eponymous “but me no buts.” The results were unexpectedly positive.
All the relevant examples; i.e., those random combinations that had
been used in a particular text, are listed in Table 1-1 below, together with
the url of the website where they were found. Thus, what follows is only a
brief commentary about their lexical components, the genre in which they
are used, and their stylistic function.
Table 1-1. Novel forms of the phrase frame found through web search
of random word combinations (letter “b”)
Examples URL
Bite me no http://eastwickpress.com/news/2012/09/bite-me-no-bites/
bites
Bush me no http://midtermmadness.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/roves-losing-
Bushes strategy/?_r=0
http://www.pageglance.com/trolls-bush.be
Bad me no http://shaksper.net/archive/2003/199-february/17674-re-bbc-series-sp-
bads 783493134
Bill me no bills http://cronymag.com/c/?p=128
Blush me no http://www.wetdryvac.net/November3rdClub/2006/11-
blushes 06/fiction/nicaragua.htm
Bass me no http://flyfishinginnh.com/vforum/archive/index.php/f-10-p-10.html
bass
Bing me no http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/2352200/apple-finally-patches-java-
Bings vulnerability
Bath me no https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/MhzKoYEbBNE/eiIG
baths NTab12EJ
Blog me no http://www.blog-me-no-blogs.blogspot.com
blogs
Brand me no http://terrifavro.ca/post/133466186967/unbrand-that-writer
brands
Bake me no https://twitter.com/KLong1724/status/552330819508109313
bakes
Blast me no http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2015_Fall_Walther.php
blasts
18 Chapter One
Bear me no http://www.khakain.com/archdeco/vault/swirve/vetinari/board.cgi%3Fboa
bears rdset=vetinari&boardid=assassin&thread=17&startmsg=20.html
Bogus me no http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1998/nov/17/further-commons-
boguses amendment-in-lieu
Boob me no http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-
boobs skyrim/62221568
Boot me no http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/VUW1931Spik-fig-
boots VUW1931Spik001a.html
Frost me no http://darcysheartstirrings.blogspot.com.es/2011/02/fyi.html
frost,
scoop me no
scoop, brown
me no browns
Brew me no http://www.soxaholix.com/tp/2012/04/mailing-it-in.html
brews
Brook me no http://languagehat.com/two-etymologies-2/
brooks
Brother me no https://books.google.es/books?id=ucatAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT48&ots=EX
brothers MR9uMNG3&dq=%22brother%20me%20no%20brothers%22&pg=PT48
#v=onepage&q=%22brother%20me%20no%20brothers%22&f=false
Bud me no https://www.flickr.com/photos/onkel_wart/2513880577
buds https://www.flickr.com/photos/62322566@N00/5950203924/
Budget me no http://www.ebay.com/itm/1902-DAN-LENO-Espinosa-ballet-Ms-
budgets Bernard-Beere-actress-photo-article-1-
/222010159482?hash=item33b0d6317a:g:6UUAAOSwnLdWrLbe
Butt me no In addition to the news item found in the GloWbE corpus, there are
butts dozens of examples of this formulation in recent websites alone. We
reproduce a few here as a way of illustration.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140624/letters/letters5.html
http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2008/01/19/butt-me-no-butts-a-sideways-
look-at-the-because-effect/
http://life-and-vincent.blogspot.com.es/2010/09/butt-me-no-butts.html
http://barticles.blogs.timesdispatch.com/2012/01/09/butt-me-no-butts/
The most obvious notion that this random sample illustrates is that
there are many more exploited versions of “* me no *s” than one may
initially believe. If one considers that all these novel31 combinations have
been retrieved by brainstorming words in front of a computer screen for an
hour, and that only words beginning with the letter b have been chosen, it
is easy to imagine that the real figure must be larger by an order of
magnitude. This estimate does not take into account the possibility that
there should be a sizeable proportion of parallel phrase frames that do not
use the first person pronoun (“me”), and use some other instead—as in the
“force him no forces” that Cooper cites (Appendix A). Furthermore, the

31
A few of them had been recorded elsewhere, but none of them has any
intertextual connection to the source cited in Appendix A.
collection above only lists examples that are not literary texts in print and
have been used in relatively recent sources (late 20th and early 21st
centuries). In fact, in addition, the process of brainstorming for plausible
formulations has resulted in a remarkable by-product group of earlier
novel occurrences of the “* me no *s” frame. These have been detected in
literary and journalistic texts of the last two centuries. Just to mention a
few—despite the fact that older literary cases are outside the scope of this
chapter—we have “book me no books,”32 “brute me no brutes,”33 and
“brink me no brinks,”34 among many others.35 Citing a few examples of
this sort, however, is a necessary step towards exposing yet another
systematic shortcoming of certain web-based corpora. In this particular
case, the reader may easily locate each formulation of the “* me no *s”
frame in their original context by performing a simple search on Google
Books©. In spite of this, as the data above indicates, the Google Books
Corpus (see section 2.5) does not retrieve any of these occurrences, even
though a direct search of each individual case was additionally performed
at this stage for good measure. Thus, one may argue that either of the
following three questions of design are faulty (or all of them to varying
degrees): First, it may well be that books published before editions were
also released in digital form may contain errors of character recognition,
especially if the font used is rare at present. In this case, although the
entirety of the Google Books database has been made into a corpus, we
can only expect to retrieve results from those stretches of text whose
characters have been correctly identified by the OCR software and thus
transcribed into intelligible words for text-driven search engines (corpora
or others). Alternatively—quite possibly, simultaneously—it is plausible
to believe that a significant chunk of the Google Books dataset is not
accessible by or has not been compiled into the web-based corpus
available at http://googlebooks.byu.edu/. The author does not know
whether this happens because certain books are not available for preview
or because the examples are found in books that were incorporated into the

32
Robert Folkestone Williams. The Youth of Shakspeare. London: Henry Colburn,
1839.
33
Thomas Otway. The Atheist; or, the Second Part of the Soldier’s Fortune.
London: T. Turner, 1813.
34
Esmerie Amori. The Epistolary Flirt in Four Exposures. Chicago: Way &
Williams, 1896.
35
Other novel occurrences from the late 19th and early 20th centuries include “bed
me no beds,” “better me no betters,” and “brother me no brothers.” The whole list
of examples and references will be happily shared upon request (only for lexical
units beginning with the letter b).
20 Chapter One
dataset after a certain date. In all, the fact remains that there are striking
discrepancies between both (theoretically identical) corpora. To illustrate
this with one of the aforementioned examples, “book me no books”
retrieves 17 results when the search is performed at the Google Books site,
whereas it retrieves none when using the Google Books corpora designed
by Mark Davies. Finally, the preceding discussion should also take into
account the fact that, as the description of the Google Books Corpus reads,
there is an inherent “mismatch between the frequency data in our charts
and what you see at the Google Books site.” Specifically, the problem
seems to be that
the n-grams frequency lists (either on our site or theirs, when you have
selected a particular dataset) apply to just THAT ONE dataset. The book
extracts, however, are from ALL Google Books (American, British, +/-
fiction, +/- one million books, etc). As a result, you will almost always see
more hits—sometimes MANY more hits—from the book extracts than
from the n-grams frequency data.
Nevertheless, this “mismatch” should not make specific frames be

absent from the list of results, at least with the examples that have been
cited. For example, a direct search of “book me no books” in both the
American and the British datasets does not retrieve a single result.
However, when one searches the “Shakespeare” (a recognizable part of the
title of the source text) and displays the results from its decade of
publication (1830s), the book that contains the cited phrase frame appears
fifth on the list of results.
However relevant the above discussion is, the data that pertains to the
initial research question requires further commentary. If we return to the
examples in Table 1-1, one element that is visually striking is the presence
of capitalized words (names), which speak of the ad hoc, creative use of
these expressions to comment on present-day celebrities or brand names.
Thus, “Bush me no Bushes” puns on the last name of a former President of
the USA, whereas “Bing me no Bings” alludes to the well-known search
engine. In this regard, this type of stylistic vitality constitutes a remarkable
finding as opposed to what corpus data seem to suggest.
On a similar note, the lexical items on which these formulations pivot
are no longer the learned and genre-specific words that we would find in
the plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods; i.e., “virgins,” “Midas,”
“petition” or “parish.” As a result, contemporary applications of this frame
contain colloquial words, often related to everyday activities. In this
regard, one may mention “blog me no blogs” (of conspicuous modernity),
“boot me no boots,” a slogan to advertise footwear or “bass me no bass,” a

thematic issue of a fishing magazine.
Apart from the cases that have been mentioned thus far, it is worthy of
note how diverse the genres of the different examples are. As stated above,
they have no links to literary discourse, and there is no single genre (or
thematic domain) that accounts for the majority of these instances. So, for
example, differences in genre span from journalism (“butt me no butts”) to
social media (“bake me no bakes”) to online discussion forums (“bath me
no baths”); and thematic disparity allows us to sample botany (“bite me no
bites”), art (“bud me no buds”), and literary scholarship (“bad me no
bads”).
The one element that one would like to investigate on a larger scale,
but for which sufficient and adequate data is lacking at present, is the
social demographics of the language users. Are users who exploit this
phrase frame aware of its literary origin and of its intertextual nature? As a
consequence, are well-educated people more likely to use the frame? And,
on a related note, if this is the case, are they more likely to use it with their
peers? Hypothetically, the fact that web-based genres are predominant in
the random sample collected indicates access to ICT—hence, a favorable
socioeconomic background. This, however, may have to do with the texts
selected for the compilation of the corpus rather than with a diastratic
differences.
In all, this chapter has tried to demonstrate how a corpus-based
analysis grounded on the available corpora is not able to accurately
account for a specific stylistic phenomenon. First, because the data from
periods where descriptive studies had already been published on the
question are more likely to yield relevant results—as opposed to present-
day language, where the ratio text in the corpus/published text is, of
necessity, much smaller. Furthermore, the ratio literary texts/available
written texts is exceedingly higher as we move back in time. This, in turn,
underscores the fact that the widespread preference for written texts in
general corpora tends to favor the presence of data from literary sources.
Finally, there also exist some technical and methodological issues that
corpus designers should address in order to provide access to data that, as
preliminary queries have shown, is already there. But me no buts, it can be
done.
22 Chapter One
References
Bartlett, J. Familiar Quotations: A collection of passages, phrases and
proverbs traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature.
London: Macmillan, 1905.
Cooper, C. B. “But Me No Buts.” Modern Language Notes 31/5 (1916):
314.
Crystal, D. The Stories of English. London: Penguin, 2005a [2004].
—. How Language Works. London: Penguin, 2005b.
—. Words, Words, Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Douglas, F. “The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech: Problems of
Corpus Design.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 18/1 (2003):
23-37.
Gaskell, G. A. Gaskell’s Compendium of Forms, Educational, Social,
Legal and Commercial. St. Louis: Richard S. Peale, 1881.
Gläser, R. Phraseologie der Englischen Sprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer,
1986a.
—. “A Plea for Phraseo-Stylistics.” In Linguistics across Historical and
Geographical Boundaries. In Honour of Jacek Frisiak, i. Linguistic
Theory and Historical Linguistics, edited by D. Kastovsky and A.
Szwedek, 41-52. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986b.
—. “The stylistic potential of phraseological units in the light of genre
analysis.” In Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, and Applications, edited
by A. P. Cowie, 125-144. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Hundt, M., N. Nesselhauf, and C. Biewer. Corpus Linguistics and the
Web. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.
Jewell, E. J. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kumar, V. The Sterling Dictionary of Idioms. New Delhi: Sterling, 1998.
Leitner, G. “International Corpus of English: Corpus Design – problems
and suggested solutions.” In New Directions in English Language
Corpora: Methodology, Results, Software Developments, edited by G.
Leitner, 75-96. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992.
Manser, M. H. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Idioms. Ware: Wordsworth,
2006.
Miller, D. and D. Biber. “Evaluating reliability in quantitative vocabulary
studies: The influence of corpus design and composition.”
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 20/1 (2015): 30-53.
Oncins-Martínez, J. L. “Another plea for ‘phraseo-stylistics’ʊor how
literary texts can contribute to the development of phraseology: the
case of Shakespeare”. In Phraseology 2005. The many faces of
Phraseology. An interdisciplinary conference. (Phraséologie 2005. La

phraséologie dans tous ses états. Colloque interdisciplinaire), edited
by C. Cosme, C. Gouverneur, and F. Meunier, 311-314. Louvain-la-
Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain.
Partridge, E. A Dictionary of Clichés. London: Routledge, 2005 [1940].
Potter, A. C. “But Me No Buts.” Modern Language Notes 30/5 (1915),
160.
Renouf, A. and J. Sinclair: “Collocational frameworks in English.” In
English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik, edited
by K. Aijmer, and B. Altenberg, 128-143. London: Longman, 1991.
Stevenson, B. E. The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous
Phrases, Part 1. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1948.
Stubbs, M. “Quantitative data on multi-word sequences in English: The
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Wells, S., and J. Shaw. A Dictionary of Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005 [1998].
24 Chapter One
Appendix A - Instances of the “* me no *s” phrase frame

recorded by Bartlett (1905), Potter (1915), and Cooper
(1916)
Table 1-2. Instances of the “* me no *s” phrase frame recorded by
Bartlett (1905), Potter (1915), and Cooper (1916)
EXAMPLE WORK AUTHOR LIST

But me no buts Rape upon Rape Henry Fielding Bartlett
Snake in the Grass Aaron Hill
Cause me no causes A New Way to Pay Philip Bartlett
Old Debts Massinger
Clerk me no clerks Ivanhoe Walter Scott Bartlett
Diamond me no Idylls of the King Alfred Bartlett
diamonds! Prize me Tennyson
no prizes!
End me no ends A New Way to Pay Philip Bartlett
Old Debts Massinger
Fool me no fools Last Days of Edward Bulwer- Bartlett
Pompeii Lytton
Front me no fronts The Lady’s Trial John Ford Bartlett
Grace me no grace, Richard II William Bartlett
nor uncle me no Shakespeare
uncle.
Madam me no The Wild Gallant John Dryden Bartlett
madams
Map me no maps Rape upon Rape Henry Fielding Bartlett
Midas me no Midas The Wild Gallant John Dryden Bartlett
O me no O’s. The Case is Altered Ben Jonson Bartlett
Parish me no The Old Wive’s George Peele Bartlett
parishes. Tale
Petition me no Tom Thumb Henry Fielding Bartlett
petitions.
Play me no plays The Knights Samuel Foote Bartlett
Plot me no plots. The Knight of the Francis Bartlett
Burning Pestle Beaumont*
Thank me no Romeo and Juliet William Bartlett
thanks, nor proud Shakespeare
me no prouds.

Virgin me no A New Way to Pay Philip Bartlett

virgins. Old Debts Massinger
Vow me no vows. Wit without Money John Fletcher* Bartlett

Blurt me no blurts. Blurt, Master Thomas Potter
Constable Middleton
Confer me no The Wedding James Shirley Potter
conferrings.
Good me no goods. The Chances John Fletcher* Potter
Hear me no hears. The Two Angry Henry Porter Potter
Women of
Abington
Heart me no hearts. The Two Angry Henry Porter Potter
Women of
Abington
Leave me no ‘Tis Pity She’s a John Ford Potter
leaving. Whore
Lord me no lords. Hyde Park James Shirley Potter
Star me no stars. The Wedding James Shirley Potter
Take me no takes. Hyde Park James Shirley Potter
Treat me no Love in a Wood William Potter
treatings. Wycherley
But me no buts. Wine, Beere, Ale Anonymous Potter
and
Tobacco
Madam me no Evening’s Love John Dryden Potter
madams.
Only me no onlies. The Green Patch Baroness Von Potter
Hutten
Fleder me no “An English critic, in a notice of Potter
fledermice! Strauss’s Fledermaus in 1910” [sic.]
Jest me no jests. Woman’s Home Monthly Potter
Companion Publication.
October 1911.
Tinke me no tinkes Common Anonymous Cooper
Conditions
Hang me no Horestes John Pickering Cooper
hangings
Founder me no Respublica, A.D. Anonymous Cooper
founderings 1553
26 Chapter One
Typhon me no Soliman and Thomas Kyd Cooper

typhons Perseda†
Force him no forces Have with You to Tomas Nashe Cooper
Saffron-Walden
Cucke me no cuckes An Humorous George Cooper
Day’s Mirth Chapman
Planet me no The Rebellion Hazzlit’s Cooper
planets Dodsley
Crown me no Lingua Thomas Tomkis Cooper
crowns (attrib.)
Private me no The English Thomas Cooper
privates Traveller Heywood
Lady me no ladies The Squire of Thomas Cooper
Alsatia § Shadwell
Dresse me no The Late Thomas Cooper
dressings Lancashire Heywood and
Witches Richard Brome
Boot me no boots The Rump John Tatham Cooper
Good me no goods The Cheats John Wilson Cooper
Conscience me no The Cheats John Wilson Cooper
conscience
Flame me no flame The Court Secret James Shirley Cooper
Grace me no graces Two Lamentable Robert Cooper
Tragedies Yarington
Star me no stars Humour out of John Day Cooper
Breath
Signet me no Humour out of John Day Cooper
signets Breath
Hold me no holds The Blind Beggar John Day Cooper
of Bethnal Green
Suspect me no The Blind Beggar John Day Cooper
suspects of Bethnal Green
Pray me no praying Trappolin Aston Cockayne Cooper
Suppos’d a Prince
Kind me no kind Greene’s Ghost Samuel Cooper
Rowlands
Alter me no alters Club Law Anonymous Cooper
Fish me no fishing Sicelides Phineas Fletcher Cooper
Nuptial me no such “With Daniel Robert Cooper௟
nuptialsަ Bartoli” Browning
* Bartlett and Potter erroneously attribute these plays to Beaumont and

Fletcher in collaboration. Late scholarship has establishhed their sole
authorship.
† Several of the sources in Cooper (1916) have been made more specific
whenever no mention was made of the play in which the phrase was
found, but only of the page in an edited collection of works. Also, the
playwright’s name has been supplied whenever it was not included in the
original article. The spelling of the plays’ titles has been modernized, but
not that of the phrase frames. The examples that had been cited by Bartlett
are not repeated in Cooper’s section whenever both source text and phrase
frame coincide.
§ Cooper gives here the name of the character who utters the words
(Teague o Divilly), not the name of the play.
ަ Cooper has simply “nuptial me no nuptials,” an obvious typographical
error.
௟ Cooper also lists “Nyk me not with nay” (Towneley Plays), “al nykked
hym wyth nay” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and “no wold thai
nick him with no nay” (Amis and Amiloun), but their structure and lexical
parallelism do not match the phrase frame that is our object of study.
CHAPTER TWO
THE VULGAR ON STAGE:

THE ENREGISTERMENT
TH
OF 18 -CENTURY CANT LANGUAGE
PAULA SCHINTU MARTÍNEZ
1. Introduction
As a consequence of the growing demand of roguish literature derived
from the English criminal environment, 18th-century dramatic representations
of the underworld proved to be a very successful venture for many
contemporary playwrights. Many of them started writing an important
number of plays which dealt with the lives and adventures of English
rogues, whose illegal activity was articulated around their encoded canting
speech. Due to their quality and success, these literary works have
traditionally been studied from a literary point of view. However, far too
little attention, if any, has been paid to the crucial role of drama as a means
for the dissemination, categorization and enregisterment of cant language.
Coleman, for example, has addressed the lexicographic potential of
roguish drama in the different volumes of her comprehensive A History of
Cant and Slang Dictionaries (2004-2010), whilst But (2011), among
others, has explored the uses and perceptions of cant and slang
terminology in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nevertheless, neither of these
works has approached cant language from the point of view of
enregisterment. In this chapter, I argue that literary depictions of cant
language can provide very useful insight into this variety and its users
during the 18th century, whilst exploring how they contributed to the
creation and circulation of linguistic and sociocultural ideas about it,
which ultimately derived in the enregisterment of the canting tongue as a
stable and homogeneous variety. For this purpose, I will analyze the most
recurrent lexical, semantic and sociocultural features of cant language as
documented in the corpus of analysis, which has been compiled using data
extracted from two of the most emblematic roguish plays available that
30 Chapter Two
represented cant in the 18th century: John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera
(1728) and The Pettyfogger Dramatized (1797), by T.B. Junr. They have
been selected with the aim of providing a representative, well-balanced
sample of this variety at the time: two plays from the early and late 1700s,
respectively. The data have been organized thanks to the information
provided by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and several dictionaries
representative of the century: Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological
English Dictionary (1721), Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English
Language (1755),1 and A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(1785) by Francis Grose. Grose’s work is the most relevant and
comprehensive canting dictionary of the 18th century (see Coleman 2008),
and the ones compiled by Bailey and Johnson constitute two of the most
influential English dictionaries of the period, which cover not only the
standard variety but also popular language, including cant. In this manner,
I will investigate to what extent literary renditions of the canting tongue
played a role in the enregisterment and circulation of this underworld
register and the cultural values most commonly associated with it.
2. On the Notion of Enregisterment:

Theoretical Background
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the study of the
processes whereby different linguistic varieties become associated with
specific cultural meanings. Registers, context-bound varieties comprising
certain linguistic features or forms in a given language (Cooper 2013, 32),
very often come to be loaded with social connotations which allow their
distinction from others. However, these connotations are not inherent to
registers, which “are not static facts about a language but reflexive models
of language use” (Agha 2005, 38) that depend on speakers and individuals
who help to shape and create the different linguistic varieties and attach
certain socio-cultural ideas to them. Then, how does this process function?
In Agha’s words, how does a given variety or register “come to be known
to its users? How were its values established, maintained or, by degrees,
transformed through this process?” (2003, 232).
Following Johnstone’s (2009, 164) and Beal and Cooper’s (2015, 35)
interpretation of Michael Silverstein’s orders of indexicality, the process
through which particular cultural ideologies come to be indexed or linked

1
In what follows, I will be using the third edition of Bailey’s work (1737), which I
accessed through the database Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME), and the
sixth edition of A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1785.
The Vulgar on Stage 31
to specific linguistic varieties undergoes three necessary stages: a given set

of linguistic features which are correlated with ideas about its speakers’
class or region (first-order indexicals) become noticeable and start to be
shaped by cultural ideologies concerning correctness, style, etc. (second-
order indexicals). Finally, these features and the indexical significance of
using them become linked with a specific social or regional identity (third-
order indexicals), conveying the idea that speech and identity are
essentially connected. At the first order of indexicality, then, speakers of a
certain variety are unaware of the relation existing between their language
and certain cultural values, which becomes observable at the second order,
when both users and non-users of the variety notice that it is employed by
specific speakers from a particular region or social class. Once the link
between language and ideology has been established, the variety becomes
“the object of overt comment” (Beal and Cooper 2015, 35) at the third
order of indexicality, and it is at this stage that enregisterment arises.
The notion of enregisterment was proposed by Agha in 2003 in his
pioneering article “The Social Life of Cultural Value,” in which he
investigates the rise of Received Pronunciation (RP) as the prestigious
spoken variety of English. He defines enregisterment as the “processes
through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a
language as a socially recognized register of forms” which indicate status
according to particular schemes of socio-cultural values (2003, 231).
These values, as highlighted above, are not inherent to the particular
linguistic features or forms of registers, “but a precipitate of sociohistorically
locatable practices, including discursive practices, which imbue cultural
forms with recognizable sign-values and bring these values into circulation
along identifiable trajectories in social space” (Agha 2003, 232). It seems
necessary, therefore, to look at the discursive practices that lead to this
process of value assignment in order to understand the enregisterment and
ensuing circulation of particular forms and features as characteristic of a
given register.
Once a variety has become subject of comment at the third order of
indexicality, its enregisterment and spread is determined by the dissemination
of oral or textual artefacts that contain and exemplify it (Agha, 2003: 243);
that is, as Johnstone points out (2009, 160), enregisterment depends on
“metapragmatic practices” or “talk about talk.” As shown in Agha’s study
about RP, the circulation of both prescriptive works such as pronouncing
dictionaries and metalinguistic commentaries in books, newspapers, etc.,
during the 18th and 19th centuries clearly favoured the assignment of
certain values to this form of expression which emerged as the prestigious
spoken variety in Britain. As such, it seems that, by means of the repeated
32 Chapter Two
reference to a certain variety as a distinct and unique register either

through interpersonal communication or through material objects such as
books, magazines, newspapers, etc., that variety gradually becomes
typified and legitimized, and its speakers start acquiring a sense of identity
and belonging when using it. The “talk about talk” creates, shapes and
helps, therefore, to share the linkages between varieties and the values and
identities associated with them, so that when these metapragmatic
practices become socially acceptable, as Cooper (2013, 34) argues,
ideologies and attitudes about speech communities are indexed. As a
consequence, once a set of linguistic forms of a given variety, either
phonological, lexical, morphological, etc. is interpreted and evaluated
according to certain ideological frameworks, it is possible to say that that
variety has been enregistered, i.e., “represented collectively in the public
imagination as a stable variety and maintained across time and region via
practices that reiterate [its] value... and its link to social status” (Johnstone
2009, 160).
When it comes to enregisterment in historical contexts, as noted by
Beal (2009 and 2012, among others), the role of works such as dictionaries
and glossaries, as well as narrative or dramatic texts that represent the
values associated with a specific variety is crucial. As Johnstone claims,
“what linguists and laypeople alike encounter in lived experience are
particular speakers, writers, or signers, saying particular things in
particular ways” (2009, 159), and these particular things said in particular
ways ultimately influence the way in which individuals perceive languages
and registers. Just as Ruano-García (2012, 377) explains in his study of the
enregisterment of the Northern dialect in Early Modern English, writing is
“a clear conduit by which the correlation between language and
sociocultural values, as well as the ideas derived from it, are foregrounded,
circulated and consumed.” The fact that a certain writer decides to use a
particular variety helps typifying and disseminating it as well as the ideas
it entails. The conscious use of a variety or register for literary purposes is
in itself an “act of enregisterment” (Clark 2013, 461).
3. 18th-century England and the Underworld:

Socio-historical Background
Going back to the variety under study, cant language became
noticeable in the period from the 16th to the 18th century, which was
characterized by an important distress motivated by the threat of the
growing criminal underworld that endangered the security and morality of
the English population. 16th-century England saw a sudden increase in
vagrancy and criminality caused by the burgeoning number of rogues and

pickpockets that seized its streets. This sudden rise had to do with certain
socio-economic and demographic reasons, the most important of which
was a sudden growth of population, which ascended from three to four
million inhabitants between 1500 and 1600. This dramatic increase in
population led to migrations of people towards the cities, especially to
London, whose population became six times bigger, from 60000 in 1550
to almost 400000 in 1650 (Gotti 1999, 8-10), causing unemployment and
impoverishment.
The situation got worse in the following centuries, especially in the
1700s, when the criminals and rogues that colonized the English streets
became more numerous and threatening. As Coleman (2008, 11) explains,
the advances in labour brought mechanization to traditional English
industries, which incremented the number of unemployed people in the
country and enhanced theft. Since industrialization required people to
work in factories, many working-class children were left unsupervised,
and some of them turned to roguery and pickpocketing for amusement.
Criminality was at its peak, and thus, the underworld systems developed,
creating more sophisticated criminal organizations headed by more refined
crime masters such as the famous Jonathan Wild (c. 1683-1725). In
addition, as noted by Gallacher (2006, 5) and Coleman (2008, 8-9), it was
not until 1798, when the first professional police force was created, that
the 18th-century English society had a stable law enforcement body. Until
that year, the streets were patrolled by parish constables or Charlies, who
were often in poor conditions, inefficient and corrupt. Consequently, as
Bell highlights, crime and vagrancy were considered “the moral panic of
the eighteenth century” (qtd. in But 2011 “A kind of gibberish”, 3).
Londoners were highly aware of the criminal environment surrounding
them, as reported in many contemporary accounts, such as the one written
by the City Marshal of London:
Now it is the general complaint of the taverns, the coffee-houses, the

shopkeepers and others, that their customers are afraid when it is dark to
come to their houses and shops for fear that their hats and wigs should be
snitched from their heads or their swords taken from their sides, or that
they may be blinded, knocked down, cut or stabbed; nay, the coaches
cannot secure them, but they are likewise cut and robbed in the public
streets, &c. (qtd. in Gallacher 2006, 3)
The preponderance of criminality in the period led to a growing feeling

of anxiety among the English population that became obsessed with
rogues and crime. Many writers reacted to this concern and started writing
34 Chapter Two
about the underworld and its practices (But 2011 “Unconventional

Language”, 3), and the rogues’ language, cant, one of the main tools to gain
some knowledge about the criminal society, became one of their targets.
Interestingly, English writers and booksellers saw in this prevailing
concern about the criminal underworld and its language a source of
personal profit since people also seemed to be fascinated and attracted by
the threats of the unknown. Crime was both menacing and attracting, and
the freedom, secrecy and romanticism inherent to famous criminal figures
represented a new way of entertainment that allowed regular English
people to escape from their daily occupations. Thus, writers began to
appropriate or even invent the underworld sociolects to prove their
supposed mastery on alien languages and cultures and this way improve
their sales (Blank 1996, 34, 38). As a result, the dangerously appealing
rogues, their lifestyle and their language soon started to populate English
literature and the emerging cant and slang glossaries associated with it
(Coleman 2004, 19).
4. The Language of the Underworld: A Definition of Cant

As I have previously noted, the growth of the English criminal
underworld was behind the publication of literary works which explored
lawbreakers’ activities, their lifestyle and, more interestingly, their
language: cant. As generally accepted, the term cant is likely to derive
from the Latin verb cantare “to sing”, and the first evidence of the word in
this sense is provided by Thomas Harman’s Caveat or Warening for
Commen Cursetors (1567).2 He defines cant as “a unknowen toung onely
but to these bold, beastly, bawdy Beggers and vaine Vacabondes, being
halfe myngled with Englyshe” (qtd. in Gotti 1999, 117). In his work,
Harman uses the terms cant and Pedlars’ French interchangeably in an
attempt to highlight not only the relation of this distinct language to a very
specific group of speakers—pedlars, vagabonds and pickpockets—(Gotti
1999, 116), but also its foreign origin which, as suggested by Thomas
Dekker (c.1572–1632), includes not only French, but also Latin, Dutch
and Spanish (Blank 1996, 54). More recent definitions of the term such as
that of Julie Coleman likewise emphasize the link between the register and
its users. For her, cant is “the language used by beggars and criminals to
hide their dishonest and illegal activities from potential victims” (2004, 4);

2
The OED first quotes the term cant in Harman’s work. However, the word is
documented as a verb, to cant, with the meaning “to speak in the whining or
singsong tone used by beggars; to beg.”
i.e., a variety employed by rogues and lawbreakers for very specific

purposes: trickery and deception. English rogues were, in most cases,
proficient in standard English, but they deliberately decided to use their
concealed register to their advantage, being able to openly communicate
without being understood by the rest of the society. Gotti goes one step
further and describes cant as “an ‘antilanguage’ typical of an ‘antisociety’,
since its speakers’ activities were considered criminal for the rest of
British society” (1999, 1). Thus, he expands the meaning of the term by
pointing to its negative social significance derived from the activities
performed by roguish speakers.
However, from a diachronic perspective, the coverage and meaning of
the term has not always been clearly delimited. The scope of the term cant
underwent a process of gradual amplification in the years prior to the 18th
century in an attempt to cover the growing range of vulgar speech present
in England. Gotti (1999, 121-122) explains that one of the contributors to
this view of cant as an all-encompassing term was B.E., who, in 1699,
expanded the meaning of cant language in A New Dictionary of the Terms
Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew by applying it not only to the
language used by beggars and criminals, but also to the more widespread
popular or vulgar language. Thus, the term became polysemic, which
accounts for the emergence of new terms to clarify and specify the notion
of cant language and restore its original meaning. Francis Grose’s
groundbreaking Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) greatly
helped to this process by introducing three new terms to refer to different
types of non-standard English: vulgar language—the conversational
language of the common people—, flash—the fashionable non-standard
language of 18th and 19th-century London demi-monde (Coleman 2008,
2)—, and slang, which referred to the non-standard variety used by
specific groups of people with common interests, often determined by age
and fashion (Coleman 2004, 4).
Then, as reflected in Coleman’s definition (2004, 4), English cant was
the variety chosen by beggars and criminals to perform their illegal
activities and try to hide them from the rest of the people. It is a register, or
rather a sociolect used by a distinct social group, employed by certain
speakers and for specific purposes that differ from those of vulgar tongue,
flash and slang. As a result, this sociolect creates and shapes what is called
an in-group, a self-dependent social group to which its members feel
emotionally attached: the society of beggars and criminals whose illegal
activities gave way to a collective social rejection towards them which
became inevitably linked to their language, making cant, as Gotti (1999, 1)
puts it, an “antilanguage.”
36 Chapter Two
5. Cant in Literature: John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera

(1728) and T. B. Junr.’s The Pettyfogger Dramatized (1797)
The early 16th century saw the first written descriptions of cant language,
mostly in the form of short lists that ultimately derived in the famous
roguish pamphlets of the second half of the century (Mikalachki 1994,
120). When these canting lists began to be read as an entertainment around
the 17th century (Coleman 2004, 183), roguish literature appeared in the
form of ballads, books, etc. (Gotti 1999, 119), yet drama emerged as one
of the most popular vehicles to represent the underworld and its language.
Nevertheless, it was not until the 18th century that the representation of
cant in literature reached its peak. Due to the worsening of the criminal
activities in London, the 1700s saw an outbreak of literary works dealing
with the English underworld and its brand-new criminal masters, which
brought a new form of roguish literature to the fore: criminal biographies
and autobiographies. In addition, the publication of pamphlets, ballads,
chapbooks, plays and other roguish literary forms increased during this
century, as well as the production of the short canting glossaries that
accompanied them and that gave way to more comprehensive non-literary
works aimed at describing cant language in a more systematic way.3
However, drama still proved to be one of the most popular vehicles for the
representation of the underworld and its language in the period.
John Gay’s outstanding masterpiece The Beggar’s Opera (1728) attests
to this. Due to its great success, this celebrated play helped to bring the
audience closer to this register, as well as contributed to the later study of
literary cant (Coleman 2004, 121). By introducing the audience to the
story of Peachum’s criminal gang, the play depicts the 18th-century
underworld and its speech. It is not clear whether Gay (1685-1732) was
actually familiar with the canting tongue or not. Roberts (1969, 23) holds
that the playwright was quite aware of the English criminal environment
of the time: two of the main characters of the play, Peachum and
Macheath, were actually modeled after the famous criminal masters
Jonathan Wild (c.1683-1725) and Jack Sheppard (1701-1724), respectively.
He also maintains that a contemporary anecdote suggests that Gay in fact
met Wild in a tavern, and this way learnt about the underworld and its
language from this criminal authority. Although this cannot be proved, it is
true that Gay visited Newgate more than once (Gallacher 2006, 15), so it is
possible that he gained his knowledge of the underworld speech during his

3
See, for example, Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(1785).
visits to the prison. Be it as it may, the fact that the canting terms used in
The Beggar’s Opera are rather scattered throughout the whole play
suggests that Gay may have turned to contemporary widely recognized
cant terms (Coleman 2004, 121) rather than using them from first-hand
experience, which would give us a useful account of the knowledge that
English people had about the canting register.
In the years prior to the 19th century, the interest in the underworld and
its concealed language decreased due to an emerging new interest in
detectives rather than criminals (Coleman 2008, 12). However, we can still
find some works of roguish literature such as the play The Pettyfogger
Dramatized (1797), by the anonymous T.B. Junr., which deals with
trickery, corruption and debt. The play was published together with a little
glossary, some of whose entries are cants terms that, given the plot of the
play, mainly refer to money, trickery and debt (Coleman 2008, 201). The
play stands out for its linguistic diversity since its unknown author proves
to have command not only of cant language and standard English, but also
of Latin, French, and the legal jargon of the time, which makes it a
valuable source of linguistic information.
In what follows, I will undertake a qualitative and quantitative linguistic
analysis of the canting lexis present in the plays selected for this study. In
this manner, I will approach 18th-century cant language in an attempt to
shed some light on the linguistic and sociocultural connotations associated
with it which were transmitted to contemporary non-canting audience by
means of drama.
6. Drama and the Enregisterment of Cant Language

in the 18th Century: Linguistic Analysis
6.1. Qualitative Analysis
John Gay enriches his portrayal of the 18th-century London underworld
with the use of canting terminology in the dialogues of The Beggar’s
Opera (1728), which is exclusively employed by the criminals of the play.
These rogues constitute the largest part of Gay’s fictional society, which is
articulated around their unlawful trade and characterized by a more
structured and professional organization headed by a powerful criminal
master, Peachum, mirroring the contemporary criminal trends in London.
The first and most salient instance of Gay’s employment of cant language
are the names of the characters, being almost all of them composed by, at
38 Chapter Two
least, one cant term. Nimming Ned, Betty Doxy and Jenny Diver,4 among
others, are examples of this interesting function of cant which suggests
that the terms used to identify some of the characters may have been
familiar enough to the non-canting audience so as to evoke their criminal
status. Apart from that, the number of cant words used in the dialogues of
the play is not particularly abundant, and they are employed in a marginal
way, probably for flavour. These professional thieves use cant vocabulary
among themselves in conversation, which helps characterizing the rogues’
social group, but, due to its occasional, irregular appearance, it is hard to
say that a clear in-group or social structure is created and shaped around it.
Furthermore, the sociolect is neither used as a tool to perform or maintain
the secrecy of their illegal activities, nor as a means to draw a distinction
or exclude the non-roguish characters of the play. As a consequence, and
taking into account the fact that almost all the characters are criminals, the
non-canting society takes a neutral position towards cant; neither positive
nor negative reactions to this variety are recorded in Gay’s play.
Similarly, in T.B.’s The Pettyfogger Dramatized (1797), cant is once
more used with characterization purposes since it is only employed by the
criminal, dishonest characters of the play. These characters are mainly
rogues under the direction of a corrupt lawyer, Mr. Wolf, who stands for
the criminal master figure so common in 18th-century London, and they
earn their living by means of fraud, thanks to which they take advantage of
naive debtors. Cant is again employed in conversation to typify and mark a
very specific type of persona; this register, however, is not used as a
literary device to shape, define and structure a social group. Indeed, cant is
not even employed to exclude outsiders. Most standard speakers
understand and successfully communicate with criminals using this
language in spite of not being able to speak cant themselves. This can be
exemplified in the passage in which roguish Sly defrauds distressed Mr.
Meanwell and addresses him using cant:
(1) Sly. . . . Dash it, if I can serve a man, I will. Come, draw a bill upon
yourself, and accept it, payable to Wolf. (Meanwell writes) –He has took
the bait (aside). Well, you shall have the mopusses.
Mr. Mean. Sir, I am so much obliged, I know not how to express. (T. B.
1797, 24)

4
Nim is defined in Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) as
“To steal or pilfer”; doxies is glossed as “She beggars, wenches, whores”; whilst
diver is defined as “A pickpocket.” In what follows, and unless otherwise
indicated, all definitions have been taken from Francis Grose’s work.
Mr. Meanwell, who is not a native speaker of cant, perfectly understands

what mopusses “money” means, which suggests that the late 18th-century
English population may have been quite aware of this variety and could
understand some of its most salient lexical elements. As such, just like in
The Beggar’s Opera (1728), non-canting characters take an impartial stand
with regards to the rogues’ language, and do not show derogatory
reactions when they hear it.
Interestingly, however, contemporary metalinguistic judgments such as
the apology for the employment of vulgar cant language found in the
preface to The Pettyfogger Dramatized (1797) bear witness to the negative
perception that outsiders had of this register:
(2) An apology should be also made for the vulgarity of many other parts
of the dialogue, which must be attributed to the general conduct and
behaviour of this description of persons. The whole is, however, humbly
submitted to the candor and indulgence of the reader; and the writer hopes,
that a perusal of this little drama, may be found in some degree
entertaining, and that it may be the means of saving some honest,
unsuspecting man from ruin. (T. B. 1797, 8. My emphasis)
Likewise, the preface to the second edition of Grose’s A Classical

Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788) testifies to this contemptuous
view of cant:
(3) Some words and explanations in the former edition having been
pointed out as rather indecent or indelicate, though to be found in Le Roux,
and other Glossaries of the like kind, these have been either omitted,
softened, or their explanations taken from books long sanctioned with
general approbation, and admitted into the seminaries for the education of
youth ʊsuch as Bailey’s, Miege’s, or Philip’s Dictionaries; so that it is
hoped this work will now be found as little offensive to delicacy as the
nature of it would admit. (Grose 1788, 3. My emphasis)
Although the two plays selected do not clearly reflect these contemporary
attitudes towards cant, non-literary testimonies such as those I have
mentioned mirror 18th-century perceptions of this variety and show how it
was, in fact, regarded as a vulgar, indecent variety which had to be
censored.
6.2. Quantitative Analysis

The analysis of the canting terminology gathered in the corpus may
shed light on the way this variety was represented, used and perceived in
40 Chapter Two
early 18th-century England. With regards to The Beggar’s Opera (1728),

the forty-one terms that Gay used in the play can be classified into seven
semantic fields: trickery and theft, appellations for beggars, money,
women, insults, drinks and others. Remarkably, although the largest
semantic field is the one concerning trickery and theft, no violent terms to
refer to these illegal activities are found in the criminals’ vocabulary,
which may be explained on account of the professionalization of criminal
life in 18th-century London (see Coleman, 2004: 184). As the play
portrays, contemporary criminals were more numerous and threatening,
but their unlawful trade became more structured and businesslike, leaving
aside the common violence of previous centuries.
As regards The Pettyfogger Dramatized (1797), the data show that cant
language continued to be widely used during the latter half of the 18th
century: fifty canting terms are found in this work. Significantly, the
semantic fields around which the criminals of this play structure their
language are the same as those found in The Beggar’s Opera (1728), with
the exception of the vocabulary for women and appellations for beggars,
which is not used in T.B.’s play. Again, the field concerned with trickery
and theft is one of the most prominent, only surpassed by the words
referring to money. Unlike The Beggars’ Opera (1728), violence is present
in the rogues’ speech in this case; however, it plays a minor role since the
criminals only employ the word whip “to pierce with a sword-thrust; to run
through” in the dialogues.
The data retrieved from the two plays show a common set of semantic
fields that articulate the criminals’ language, and around which their lives
and activities are organized. Table 2-1 lists these fields, namely trickery
and theft, money, food and drink, and insults:
Table 2-1. Most relevant semantic fields in the corpus
Semantic Types Examples Tokens Percentage

field
Trickery and 23 Nim “to steal or 45 46.9 (45/96)
Theft pilfer”; bilk “to
cheat”
Money 14 Crook “sixpence”; 20 20.8 (20/96)
coriander seed
“money”
Food and 9 Guzzling “to drink 19 19.8 (19/96)
Drink greedily”; soaking
“to drink”
Insults 13 Flat “a bubble, gull, 12 12.5 (12/96)

or silly fellow”;
scaly “mean,
sordid”
Total 59 96 100 (96/96)
As Table 2-1 shows, the vocabulary regarding trickery and theft has a
prominent role in the 18th-century data. Clearly, the number of words
belonging to this semantic field is larger than those found in the other
groups, and their frequency significantly doubles that of the terms
included in the semantic field of money. These, as well as the words
denoting food, drink and insults are also quite numerous and recurrent in
the corpus, thereby contributing to the establishment of homogeneous and
stable semantic frames for the articulation of 18th-century literary cant. It is
worth noting that an important number of the terms included within these
semantic fields—black “a shabby, mean fellow”; tipple “liquor,” among
others—are used as proper names for some of the fictional criminals, so I
have been unable to obtain exact quantitative data in terms of frequency.
However, interesting qualitative information can be derived from this
employment of canting language, since these terms seem to have been
salient enough so as to be recognized and associated with crime.
A more careful examination of the canting lexis gathered in the corpus
reveals the presence of a recurrent set of items which are used in the two
plays in a relatively systematic and consistent manner:
Table 2-2. Most recurrent canting terms in the corpus
Cant term Tokens Percentage

Bumper “A full glass” 6 42.9 (6/14)
Ready “Money in possession” 2 14.3 (2/14)
Bubble “The party cheated” 2 14.3 (2/14)
Black “A shabby, mean fellow” 2 14.3 (2/14)
Punch “A liquor” 2 14.3 (2/14)
Total 14 100 (14/14)
Notably, the term bumper outnumbers the other words in terms of

frequency. Ready, bubble, black and punch have the same rate of
occurrence. It is worth noting that, in addition to its use in the dialogues,
black is also employed as the name for one of the characters, which
acknowledges its salience and importance. Besides, and although it is not
included in Table 2-2 due to its lack of presence in the dialogues of the
42 Chapter Two
plays, there is another word which is documented in the corpus data: filch
“to steal; to take by theft.”5 This term is not used with this sense during the
action of the play given that it is employed to identify two characters:
Filch in The Beggar’s Opera (1728), and Filchey in The Pettyfogger
Dramatized (1797); however, clear allusion is made to this meaning since
the two rogues are professional thieves, which likewise reveals the
significance of this word. Remarkably, all the terms belong to the four
semantic fields highlighted in Table 2-1: filch denotes trickery and theft,
ready refers to money, bumper and punch are drinks, and black and
bubble, insults.
These terms, thus, constitute a fairly consistent lexical repertoire that
was presented before the non-canting London audience through dramatic
performance, giving way to the literary articulation of 18th-century English
cant. As such, and according to its dramatic representation, cant in the
1700s mainly referred to trickery, money, insults and drinking. This, in the
words of But, bears witness to “a deeply embedded, negative attitude
towards criminals in the period” (2011 “A kind of gibberish”: 4), which
was in turn inevitably transferred to their language. Contemporary non-
literary descriptions of this sociolect reinforce the linguistic account of the
London underworld provided by the corpus; in fact, some of the most
important dictionaries of the period listed these terms. Nathan Bailey’s
Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1737) recorded all the words
but bumper in the section devoted to cant language. Similarly, Samuel
Johnson included all of them in A Dictionary of the English Language
(1785) and highlighted that black, an abbreviation for blackguard, was “a
cant word amongst the vulgar,” and that ready was seen as “a low word.”
Finally, Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785)
likewise glossed all the words with the exception of filch, which was
explained with a different meaning.6 Interestingly, the word ready was
specifically labeled as cant, which emphasizes its salience as a characteristic
term of this register. These testimonies confirm the cant status of the
words used by John Gay and the anonymous T.B. in their representation of
the London underworld in the period. In addition, modern lexicographic
evidence provided by the OED is in line with the previous data and points
to the stability of this canting lexical repertoire across centuries by
recording all the terms I have extracted from the corpus. This reinforces
the linguistic portrait that 18th-century roguish plays made of the underworld

5
The definition for filch has been extracted from Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary
of the English Language (1785).
6
It was defined as “a beggar’s staff, with an iron hook at the end, to pluck clothes
from an hedge, or any thing out of a casement.”
language and confirms their reliability as sources of linguistic and

sociocultural information about it, helping to typify and categorize this
variety in the period.
7. Discussion and Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, I have proposed a linguistic and sociolinguistic
approach to the literary use of cant language in the 18th century from the
perspective of the framework of enregisterment. By means of the analysis
of the plays, I have been able to identify the most recurrent features related
to contemporary canting tongue and, in light of the qualitative and
quantitative analysis of the corpus data obtained, it appears that they show
enregisterment of both linguistic and sociocultural features associated with
cant language.
The consistent and recurrent representation of a particular lexical
repertoire in the plays—bumper, ready, bubble, etc.—which is articulated
around well-defined semantic fields such as trickery, theft, money, food
and drink, and insults led to their gradual recognition and categorization as
characteristic of cant language by the non-canting audience, whose ideas
about this variety were shaped around the linguistic information circulated
thanks, among others, to dramatic performance. These particular lexical
forms became differentiable within the English language and started to be
considered part of a homogeneous and stable variety which was closely
connected with its users. Moreover, the negative views of criminal
characters and communities reflected in plays and in contemporary
metalinguistic comments greatly contributed to the process of value
assignment via which pejorative perceptions of specific personae were
linked to the language they employed, creating sociocultural ideas and
stereotypes that were indexed to this variety. Thus, cant became associated
with a very specific type of speaker that embodied certain extra-linguistic
features such as unlawfulness, wickedness, mischief or greed, and whose
main purposes were deception and theft. Once this link was established,
the variety started to be the object of metapragmatic practices or “talk
about talk” in the form of drama, reaching the third order of indexicality,
which indicates that cant was already seen as a distinct and unique register
different from others. This specific lexical repertoire and the values it
entailed were spread and consumed thanks to 18th-century dramatic
performance, which served as a conduit for the steady dissemination of
linguistic and sociocultural ideas about cant language. The success of
plays such as those analysed greatly contributed towards this process of
diffusion and legitimation by bringing cant to large audiences that
44 Chapter Two
gradually became aware and learnt about the register and its sociocultural
values.
All in all, 18th-century dramatic representations of cant language prove
to be a crucial element in the process of enregisterment of this underworld
variety since their production certainly points to the existence of third-
order indexical links whereby linguistic and sociocultural ideas about cant
were indexed to this form of expression. Further research in the field of
enregisterment may shed light on the processes involved in language
social and regional variation, as well as on people’s past and present
attitudes and perceptions about language use that lead to the creation and
circulation of linguistic and cultural ideologies associated to the many
varieties of the English language.
References
Agha, A. “The Social Life of Cultural Value.” Language &
Communication 23 (2003): 231-273.
—. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
15/1 (2005): 38-59.
Beal, J. “‘By Those Provincials Mispronounced’: The STRUT Vowel in
Eighteenth-Century Pronouncing Dictionaries.” Language and History
55/1 (2012): 5-17.
—. “Enregisterment, Commodification, and Historical Context: ‘Geordie’
versus ‘Sheffieldish’.” American Speech 84/2 (2009): 138-156.
Beal, J, and P. Cooper. “The Enregisterment of Northern English”. In
Researching Northern English, edited by R. Hickey, 25-50.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2015.
Blank, P. Broken English. Dialects and the Politics of Language in
Renaissance Writings. London: Routledge, 1996.
But, R. ‘A kind of gibberish used by thieves and gypsies’: The Social
Significance of ‘cant’ in the Eighteenth Century. Crime and the City
symposium. Sheffield: School of Law, University of Sheffield, 2011.
—. Unconventional Language Use in the Past: The Pragmatics of Slang in
an Eighteenth-Century Context. Sheffield: University of Sheffield,
2011.
Cannadine, D., ed. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. [online].
Accessed August 3, 2015. www.oxforddnb.com/.
Clark, U. “Er’s from off: The Indexicalization and Enregisterment of Black
Country Dialect.” American Speech 88/4 (2013): 441-466.
Coleman, J. A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries. Volume I: 1567-
1784. New York: Oxford UP, 2004.
—. A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries. Volume II: 1785-1858. New

York: Oxford UP, 2008.
Cooper, P. “Enregisterment in Historical Contexts: A Framework.” PhD
diss., University of Sheffield, 2013.
Gallacher, I. The Beggar’s Opera and its Criminal Law Context. Syracuse:
Syracuse University College of Law, 2006.
Gay, J. The Beggar’s Opera. London: John Watts, 1728 [online].
Accessed March 10, 2015. https://archive.org/.
Gotti, M. The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds: 17th and 18th
Century Canting Lexicography in England. Tübingen: Niemeyer,
1999.
Grose, F. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: Printed
by S. Hooper, 1785. Accessed March 10, 2015.
https://www.gutenberg.org/.
—. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. [2nd ed.]. London:
Printed by S. Hooper, 1788. Accessed March 10, 2015.
https://www.gutenberg.org/.
Johnson, S. A Dictionary of the English Language. [6th ed.] London:
Printed by J. F. and C. Rivington, 1785. Accessed March 10, 2015.
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Johnstone, B. How to Speak Like a Pittsburgher: Exploring the Role of a
Folk Dictionary in the Production of a Dialect. Limerick: University
of Limerick, 2006.
—. “Pittsburghese Shirts: Commodification and the Enregisterment of an
Urban Dialect.” American Speech 84/2 (2009): 157-175.
Lancashire, I., ed. Lexicons of Early Modern English. Accessed July 13,
2015. leme.library.utoronto.ca/
Mikalachki, J. “Gender, Cant, and Cross-talking in “The Roaring Girl.”
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http://www.oed.com/.
Roberts, E., ed. The Beggar’s Opera. Nebraska: U of Nebraska P., 1969.
Ruano-García, J.: “On the Enregisterment of the Northern Dialect in Early
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Martín Alegre et al., 376-383. Barcelona: AEDEAN, 2012.
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Collection from the British Library. London: British Library
Publishing, 2010 [1797].
CHAPTER THREE
BIBLICAL TYPES AND ARCHETYPES

IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET
LUIS JAVIER CONEJERO MAGRO
1. Introduction
The effect or impact that a word, a phrase or a sentence from the Holy
Scripture, or a mere reference to the Bible, may have on literary discourse
is not, in principle, any different to the bearing that any of those segments
may have upon a manifestation of ordinary written or oral language.
Likewise, the role of biblical intertextuality in a play or poem written by
Shakespeare is not different, in essence, to that of a quotation or a simple
scriptural reference in the speech of a preacher, a common believer or,
simply, of any individual who quotes the Old or the New Testament for
cultural, historical or any other reason. The function of the use of such
quotation may range from poles as distant from one another as are, in fact,
the sectarian indoctrination or proselytism, on the one hand, and the mere
decoration of the language, on the other. This function is not dissimilar to
that of allusions to classical literature. In other words, scriptural
intertextuality may have profound religious and theological significance or
merely an aesthetic and stylistic one, or perhaps both, as has often been the
case with mystical literature.
It is probably unnecessary to state that the Bible has been one of the
main sources of all manifestations of art and particularly of literature. As
far as English literature is concerned, it is a generally acknowledged fact
that the King James Version of the Bible was probably the most influential
book on the literature written in English after 1611; and most critics and
readers coincide in the fact that this particular influence was, in general,
more of an aesthetic nature than of a doctrinal or even ethic one. Any
which way, there is little doubt that the strength of the religious
component gradually decreased as the heyday of the religious debate of
the Reformation weakened. This point is quite important because
48 Chapter Three
Shakespeare wrote the biggest part of his works between 1590 and 1611,
that is, before the publication date of the Authorised King James Version.
In other words, neither could Shakespeare benefit from the high aesthetic
quality of the Authorised Version of the Holy Writ nor was it easy for him
to escape from the theological feuds in which his fellow writers and
humanists were involved. What is certain though is that, in his numerous
works, there is no evidence of his participation in the mentioned religious
controversy of the epoch. It is equally true, and quite relevant for the kind
of analysis carried out in this chapter, that the main source of his frequent
resource to biblical discourse was the so-called Geneva Bible.1
Needless to say that the language of the Bible has indeed been an
inexhaustible source of literary inspiration2 and rhetorical devices; and this
is true of all of its versions and renderings into the languages of all of the
countries of Christendom. This is true because all of them count on
translations, which rightly deserve the qualifiers of “ancient,” “venerable”
and “memorable.” This memorable and, to a certain extent, venerable
character of the language of those translations accounts for the fact that
many authors have drawn on it for purely aesthetic reasons. This is quite
logical especially if one bears in mind that the Bible has not only affected
the mentality and beliefs of the peoples of those countries but also their
languages. The enormous wealth of rhetorical figures, literary devices or
forms, and even of phraseological units, collocations or single words of
biblical origin that have entered the vernacular languages into which the
Holy Writ has been translated is telling evidence of this fact.
The existence of this strictly linguistic influence, or interlanguage, in
the ordinary language of the different peoples of Europe has its logical
parallel in the strictly stylistic—not doctrinal—influence or intertext in
what might be called the extraordinary use of language, namely, in

1
Steven Marx, in his book Shakespeare and the Bible, states that “[the] first
edition of the King James translation of the Bible was published in London in 1611
[so it] is unlikely that Shakespeare had a hand in this project, but not impossible”
(2013, 1). In the “General Note” of his book, he also agrees with the fact that “the
[Geneva Bible] is one that most authorities agree Shakespeare read” (Marx 2003,
iv).
2
See Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, The Art of Biblical Poetry, The
Literary Guide to the Bible, The Pleasures of Reading, The World of Biblical
Literature; Harold Bloom, Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the
Bible to the Present, The Book of J; Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and
Literature, Words with Power: Being a Second Study of ‘The Bible and
Literature’; Frank Vermode, The Sense of an Ending, The Genesis of Secrecy: On
the Interpretation of Narrative; among others.
Biblical Types and Archetypes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet 49
literature. It is therefore surprising that the analysts of the biblical

language of Shakespeare fall so often into the trap of believing that
Shakespeare shares many of the teaching principles, maxims or ideas
expressed in the quotations or references from the Bible that he puts into
the mouths of his characters.3 It surprises, in short, that they confuse to
such a degree, and so frequently, the author with his characters. Probably
their faith and their apostolic zeal often drown the objectivity exacted by
literary criticism, deviating their attention from its real object, that is, the
aesthetic and stylistic value of the work. On other occasions, it is an
excessive emphasis upon moralism which imbalances the critics’ judgement.
This replacement of the aesthetic by the ethic is equally dangerous in
literary criticism. It was Edmond Malone,4 the pioneering critic to whom
Shakespearean studies are otherwise heavily indebted, who inaugurated
and started injecting this moralizing into his critical views, a line of
interpretation later followed by Joseph Ritson,5 Charles Wordsworth6 and
William James Rolfe.7
As for the critics whose religious zeal overshadows the aesthetic value
of Shakespeare’s works, R. Chris Hassel, Jr., is worth mentioning. The
author of “Hamlet’s ‘Too, Too Solid Flesh’,” Hassel, Jr., is an expert on
the controversy over the role of faith and works maintained between

3
The opposite case, so to speak, would be Bernard Shaw’s for this dramatist uses,
and even subverts, biblical language in order to emphasise his Christian disbelief
as Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín has proven in his article “Shaw’s Subversion of
Biblical Language” (2013, 114-34).
4
Edmond Malone’s own edition of Shakespeare’s works—including essays on the
dramatist’s biography or the plays in performance—remain invaluable. Among his
works, both as an editor and as a critic, the following ones are very relevant: “An
Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were
Written,” in The Plays of William Shakspeare in Ten Volumes (1778); A
Dissertation of the Three Parts of “King Henry VI” (1787); An account of the
incidents from which the title and part of the story of Shakspeare’s “Tempest”
were derived, and its true date ascertained (1809); and, especially, Life of
Shakspeare (1821).
5
Ritson expresses his unfavourable opinion of Malone’s edition of Shakespeare’s
plays in his Cursory criticisms on the edition of Shakspeare published by Edmond
Malone (1792). Later on, he published his own edition: Fairy Tales, Legends &
Romances Illustrating Shakspeare & Other Early English Writers (1875).
6
The first edition of his book On Shakspeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible,
was published in 1864, in London.
7
Rolfe is probably one of the key American figures in early Shakespearean
criticism. His works are: Shakespeare the Boy (1896); Life of Shakespeare (1901);
Life of William Shakespeare (1904); and Shakespearean Proverbs (1908).
50 Chapter Three
Catholic and Protestant theologians in the time of the Reformation. Indeed,

this author obstinately imposes upon the plot and the point of view of
Shakespeare’s play, and particularly upon Hamlet’s motivations and
intentions, his Lutheran if not Calvinistic doctrine. He tries to impress the
reader with an equally impressive list of biblical quotations and references
to prove the un-provable, namely, that Hamlet is not ultimately impelled
by his wish to restore human decency in rotten Denmark but by his faith in
providence (Hassel Jr. 1994, 612). For Hamlet’s temporary reflection on
what had to be done and on the course his action had to take had much
more to do with “works” than with pure or blind faith—sola fides
sufficit—, the doctrine of the Calvinists,8 or the English Puritans, for that
matter.
The clearest forerunner of this militant Christian criticism is to be
found in bishop Charles Wordsworth. For the large quantity, and even the
undeniable quality, of Shakespeare’s biblical intertextuality analysed and
commented upon by Wordsworth in his classic study, On Shakspeare’s
Knowledge and Use of the Bible, special attention will be given to the kind
of analysis he carries out in this study. For bishop Wordsworth’s
pioneering work—which is an inevitable reference for all critics and
scholars specialising in this dimension of Shakespearean studies—stands
out amongst the critical literature which confuses the aesthetic with the
doctrinal function of biblical discourse in Shakespeare’s literary text and,
as a result, the beliefs of the author and those with which he imbues his
characters.
2. “Words, words, words”

A case in point of this quasi-pastoral approach is that of Wordsworth in
his otherwise well-informed and very useful book. Thus, referring to two
biblical collocations Hamlet uses when seeing the Ghost of his Father, he
calls the angels “ministers of grace” (1.4.39)9 and “heavenly Guards!”
(3.4.105), one can easily identify the biblical echo in the Psalms. However,

8
Other approaches are also studied by R. Chris Hassel Jr. in his “Painted Women:
Annunciation Motifs in Hamlet” (1998), where he goes one step further in his
comments about the possible similes that exist between artistic and literary images
of the annunciation by the late sixteenth century, and Shakespeare’s representation
of Hamlet’s mother and Ophelia on some significant occasions. As a matter of fact,
the blasphemous intentions that he guesses in the purely aesthetic uses of this kind
of iconography by Shakespeare are absolute nonsense.
9
Citations to Shakespeare are to Hamlet, edited by T.J.B. Spencer and Stanley
Wells (2005).
bishop Wordsworth’s Anglican militancy prevents him from seeing that

the two collocations referred to the ministry of the angels and the terms
“unhouseled” (without receiving the sacrament) and “unanealed” (without
the unction), and the implicit reference to the Purgatory, are only devices
to enhance characterization and mediaeval setting. Prince Hamlet was a
mediaeval prince and Denmark, in the Middle Ages, like most other
Western nations, a Catholic country. Therefore, the function of these two
collocations is merely stylistic.
Another collocation of biblical origin that also serves a characterising
function is “break my heart.” This one even lacks the pious purpose of the
biblical text, which gives light to this collocation. Indeed, having
witnessed the promptness with which Gertrude, whose husband is barely
in the grave, marries and shares her bed with Claudius, a fact that Hamlet
considers to be incestuous and which therefore breaks his heart, the young
prince utters the following famous words:
(1) She married. O, most wicked speed, to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue! (1.2.156-9).
It is obvious that the biblical key, in this case, resides within the words
“break my heart,” in which not only do the verses of the psalmist
resonate;10 yet so too the voice of the prophet Isaiah11 and even that of the
evangelist Luke.12 It is evident that Hamlet does not invoke, neither in this

10
“He healeth those that are broken in heart, and bindeth up their sores” (Psalm
147:3); “The sacrifices of God are a contrite spirit: a contrite and a broken heart, O
God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17); and “Rebuke hath broken mine heart,
and I am full of heaviness, and I looked for some to have pity on me, but there was
none: and for comforters, but I found none” (Psalm 69:20). For these, and the
following quotations from the Bible, original spelling from the 1560 Geneva
Bible—see Works Cited for full reference—has been modernised; and alterations
have been made in a small number of instances where confusion might otherwise
result (for example, ‘thee’ for ‘the’).
11
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, therefore hath the Lord anointed me: he
hath sent me to preach good tidings unto the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to
preach liberty to the captives, and to them that are bound, the opening of the
prison” (Isaiah 61:1).
12
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me, that I should
preach the Gospel to the poor, he hath sent me, that I should heal the broken
hearted, that I should preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to
the blind, that I should set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).
52 Chapter Three
case nor probably throughout the whole work, the divine compassion that
is reminded to us by the psalmist, the prophet and the evangelist.
Contrarily, he only employs the image of the “broken heart” in order to
show his sorrow and the magnitude of both his pain, and the hatred and
resentment that will lead him to carry out his revenge or to administer
justice, according to what is understood by the work. Its function,
therefore, is rhetorical, not religious, and serves to justify the need for
revenge or justice.
Regarding the question of whether this play is about a man seeking
revenge or looking forward to administering justice, it must be stated right
now that, apart from the traditional interpretation of this play as a “classic
revenge tragedy,” there is another one that is far more in keeping with
Shakespeare’s humanistic view of life. This alternative interpretation sees
Hamlet as the inevitable victim of an honest humanist trying to shun the
feudal thirst for revenge in favour of the modern search of justice. Only in the
light of this perspective, does Hamlet’s interest in persuading people of the
righteousness of his cause, and even his procrastination, acquire meaning.13
The collocation man/dust that Hamlet uses at the end of his illustrious
eulogy of man has also been recognised for its biblical criticism as an echo
of the words of Genesis 3:19. Behold the context in which Hamlet delivers
those famous words:
(2) (…) What a piece of work is a man,

how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties, in form
and moving how express and admirable, in action how
like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet
to me what is this quintessence of dust? (2.2.303-8)
Stanley Wells (2005, 220) draws our attention to the biblical resonance
of the word “dust,” but without making any further comment. The biblical
intertext comes from Genesis 3:17-9:
(3) Also to Adam [the Lord] said: “Because thou hast obeyed the voice of
thy wife, and has eaten of the tree, (whereof I commanded thee, saying,
Thou shalt not eat of it) cursed is the earth for thy sake; in sorrow shalt
thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring
forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the earth, for out of it wast thou
taken, because thou art dust, and to dust shalt thou return.”

13
See Arnold Kettle, “From Hamlet to Lear” in Shakespeare in a Changing World
(1964), especially pp. 160-171.
However since these words of Genesis have become part and parcel of the
liturgy of the Church, and quite popular due to the traditional practice of
the imposition of ashes for Ash Wednesday, it is worth making it clear
that, contrary to what may appear at times, the mediaeval insistence on the
brevity of life can by no means define Hamlet’s personality. Far from that,
the concept “dust” is the key to a question about the mystery of the origin
of man. Indeed, what Hamlet highlights through these beautiful words is
the greatness of man. In fact, this eulogy is among one of the best literary
homages to mankind.
Another interesting and well-known collocation of biblical origin is
used by Hamlet in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy: the land of no
return. Wordsworth, quoting and relying on Douce (1807), agrees with
this author in that “Job, was present to our poet’s mind” (Wordsworth
1880, 288), referring to Hamlet’s words in the said soliloquy: “The
undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns…” (3.1.79-
80). The similarity with Job’s words is beyond all doubt: “Before I go and
shall not return, even to the land of darkness and shadow of death” (Job
10:21). Therefore, the existence of this case of intertextuality between
Hamlet and the Book of Job is unquestionable.
In a thorough analysis on biblical allusion in Shakespeare’s tragedies,
Peter Milward pays a lot of attention to the references to the Book of Job.
Milward (1987, 1-3) states:
(4) [in] the wealth of Biblical echoes and allusions in the course of
[Hamlet], what stands out most impressively is the way they serve to
emphasize the predicament of Man in this world [and this] is the
predicament most vividly portrayed, among the Biblical writings, in the
Book of Job, whose echoes, while scattered throughout the play, come as it
were to a head in Hamlet’s central soliloquy of “To be, or not to be.” (…)
From this point of view, one might even say that the basic meaning of the
play is a preparation for death (in a Socratic as well as a Christian sense),
as in answer to the basic question of his soliloquy there gradually dawns
over Hamlet’s mind the lesson “The readiness of all” (…).
Nonetheless, no one must say “that the basic meaning of the play is a
preparation for death.” In fact, there is no doubt, however, that given the
popularity of Job’s story, these words of the text attributed to Moses must
have contributed enormously to conveying the high degree of affliction
that Hamlet is enduring at that particular moment. This is a telling
example that testifies to the fact that Shakespeare is not intending to imbue
Hamlet with Job’s patience and endurance, but to highlight the degree of
the latter.
54 Chapter Three
Another enlightened collocation that Hamlet would use to denigrate his

mother is “full of bread.” In the reflection he makes during the third scene
of act III, in the infamous passage in which he doubts between killing his
uncle while he prays or delaying the course of his action, Hamlet utters the
mentioned collocation: “[He] took my father grossly, full of bread”
(3.3.80). Malone is the first to hear the prophetic voice of Ezekiel through
the phrase “full of bread.”14 Later on Johnson, Ritson, and Rolfe15 would
also refer to Ezekiel’s words as a source of Hamlet’s enigmatic
collocation. Indeed, speaking of the infidelity of Jerusalem, the prophet
Ezekiel utters the following well-known words:
(5) [b]ehold this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, Pride, fullness of
bread, and abundance of idleness was in her, and in her daughters: neither
did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49).
In this scene, Hamlet makes reference to the unexpected killing of his dear
father, King Hamlet, whose death, as was stated earlier, had caught him
unrepentant, unconfessed and, worst of all, unhouseled, as the Ghost says
in one of his appearances (1.5.77). Hamlet’s words are:
(6) A villain kills my father, …

(…)
‘A took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven? (3.3.76-82).
Though Malone deserves the credit for being the first to detect this
biblical trace, the kind of critical perspective he applies on Shakespeare is
perhaps not the most adequate; for he simply identifies the source but adds
very little or nothing. Wordsworth, on the contrary, adds too much. He
adds too much, and of no relevance. As always, he takes advantage of each
single quotation or reference to tell us how good a Christian Shakespeare
was or, like in this case, that Shakespeare shows an “intimate acquaintance
with Holy Scripture” (1880, 208).
With this collocation, the wickedness of the Queen is expressed by her
comparison to disloyal Jerusalem, to Sodom and her daughters; to which

14
“The uncommon expression, full of bread, our poet borrowed from the Holy
Writ: … Ezekiel xvi. 49” (Malone 1778, 215).
15
Comments by these critics are compiled in The Dramatic Works of William
Shakespeare, in Ten Volumes: ‘Hamlet, ‘Othello’, ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre’.
Volume Ten. New York: Collins & Hannay, 1923.
Ezekiel in the same text names “whores.”16 The parallelism with Queen

16
“And beside all thy wickedness (woe, woe unto thee, saith the Lord God): thou
hast also built unto thee an high place, and hast made thee an high place in every
street. Thou hast built thine high place at every corner of the way, and hast made
thy beauty to be abhorred: thou hast opened thy feet to everyone that passed by,
and multiplied thy whoredom. Thou hast also committed fornication with the
Egyptians thy neighbors, which have great members, and hast increased thy
whoredom, to provoke me. Behold, therefore I did stretch out mine hand over thee,
and will diminish thine ordinary, and deliver thee unto the will of them that hate
thee, even to the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy wicked
way. Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast
insatiable: yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be
satisfied. Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication from the land of Canaan
unto Chaldea, and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith. How weak is thine heart,
saith the Lord God, seeing thou doest all these things, even the work of a
presumptuous whorish woman? In that thou buildest thine high place in the corner
of every way, and makest thine high place in every street, and hast not been as an
harlot that despiseth a reward. But as a wife that playeth the harlot, and taketh
others for her husband. They give gifts to all other whores, but thou givest gifts
unto all thy lovers, and rewardest them, that they may come unto thee on every
side for thy fornication. And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy
fornications, neither the like fornication shall be after thee: for in that thou givest a
reward, and no reward is given unto thee, therefore thou art contrary. Wherefore, O
harlot, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God, because thy shame was
poured out, and thy filthiness discovered through thy fornications with thy lovers,
and with all the idols of thine abominations, and by the blood of thy children,
which thou didst offer unto them. Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers,
with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all
them that thou hast hated: I will even gather them round about against thee, and
will discover thy filthiness unto them, that they may see all thy filthiness. And I
will judge thee after ye manner of them that are harlots, and of them that shed
blood, and I will give thee the blood of wrath and jealousy. I will also give thee
into their hands, and they shall destroy thine high place, and shall break down thine
high places. They shall strip thee also out of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair
jewels, and leave thee naked and bare. They shall also bring up a company against
thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their
swords. And they shall burn up thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon
thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the
harlot, and thou shalt give no reward anymore. So will I make my wrath toward
thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will cease and be no
more angry. Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast
provoked me with all these things, behold, therefore I also have brought thy way
upon thine head, saith the Lord God: yet hast not thou had consideration of all
thine abominations. Behold, all that use proverbs, shall use this proverb against
thee, saying, as is the mother, so is her daughter. Thou art thy mother’s daughter,
56 Chapter Three
Gertrude, who not only fornicates with her lover but also pays him—
paying him with the royal crown—, could not be clearer. As for the
severity of her crime, as seen and confirmed by the critics and editors that
comment upon the phrase “full of bread,” it also appears more powerful
for the fact that King Hamlet dies in sin. Hamlet’s father died unanealed,
as his Ghost says, that is, unanointed and unabsolved, because he was
unable to purify his soul through extreme unction.
Once again, the prophetic text of Ezekiel has a very clear rhetorical and
stylistic function, as it serves to complete the profile of the two characters
that plot and carry out the crime.17 Therefore, the use of biblical discourse
enhances the style of the play. It allows Shakespeare to highlight the
magnitude of the severity and cruelty of the regicide. In fact, for Hamlet,
his admirable father, being human, was also a sinner. For, though in
goodness he believes that nobody bit him, he is like everybody else, a
sinner. Thus, depriving him of extreme unction not only kills his body but
also punishes his soul to the suffering of Purgatory. That is the only
function of the echo of Ezekiel, namely, to add more strength to the crime
committed by his uncle and his mother.
In one of the most soring conversations that he has with his mother,
comparing his father to Claudius, her new husband, Hamlet recurs to a
collocation whose biblical force gives the scene an additional dose of
severity. He tells her mother that Claudius is “…a mildewed ear/Blasting
his wholesome brother” (3.4.65-6). Wordsworth (1880, 69) detects in
these words the echo of the second dream of the Pharaoh, described in
Genesis, stating that he saw “seven thin ears, and blasted with the East
wind, sprang up after them” (Genesis 41:6). Of course, the function of

that hath cast off her husband and her children, and thou art the sister of thy sisters,
which forsook their husbands and their children: your mother is an Hittite, and
your father an Amorite. And thine elder sister is Samaria, and her daughters, that
dwell at thy left hand, and thy young sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is
Sodom, and her daughters. Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done
after their abominations: but as it had been a very little thing, thou wast corrupted
more than they in all thy ways. As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath
not done, neither she nor her daughters, as thou hast done and thy daughters”
(Ezekiel 16:23-48).
17
I am convinced by the validity of an original idea that professor López Ortega
explained in one of his seminars on Shakespeare (2012), commenting upon the
phrase “full of bread.” To be precise, López Ortega maintains that Shakespeare
establishes a brutal contrast between the collocation “full of bread” and the term
“unhous’led” uttered by the Ghost in the passage, since “unhous’led” means
without the sacramental bread. Therefore, this is an equivalent to “the bread of
communion.”
these old words of Genesis, repeated afterwards in Exodus 7,18 1 Kings

8,19 Amos 420 or Haggai 2,21 is that of making the words of Hamlet more
memorable by enhancing them with the vein of the strength of biblical
language.
Finally, just before the duel with Laertes and with the intention of
appeasing Horatio, Hamlet utters a few words referring to God’s providence
with the clear-cut echo of Matthew 10:29.22 These are Hamlet’s words:
(7) We defy augury. There is special

providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not
to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not
now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man
knows of aught he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?
Let be. (5.2.213-18)
It is quite easy to identify Christ’s words23 (“… one [sparrow] of them

18
“And the Lord had spoken unto Moses and Aaron, saying, If Pharaoh speak unto
you, saying, Shew a miracle for you, then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod,
and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall be turned into a serpent. Then went Moses
and Aaron unto Pharaoh, and did even as the Lord had commanded; and Aaron
cast forth his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it was turned into a
serpent. Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and sorcerers, and those
charmers also of Egypt did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast
down every man his rod, and they were turned into serpents. But Aaron’s rod
devoured their rods. So Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not to
them, as the Lord had said” (Exodus 7:8-13).
19
“When there shall be famine in the land, when there shall be pestilence, when
there shall be blasting, mildew, grasshopper or caterpillar, when their enemy shall
besiege them in the cities of their land, or any plague, or any sickness” (1 Kings
8:37).
20
“I have smitten you with blasting, and mildew: your great gardens and your
vineyards, and your fig trees, and your olive trees did the palmerworm devour: yet
have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord” (Amos 4:9).
21
“Before these things were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there
were but ten: when one came to the winepress for to draw out fifty vessels out of
the press, there were but twenty. I smote you with blasting, and with mildew, and
with hail, in all the labors of your hands: yet you turned not to me, saith the Lord.
Consider, I pray you, in your minds, from this day, and afore from the four and
twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the
Lord’s Temple was laid: consider it in your minds” (Haggai 2:17-9).
22
“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall on the
ground without your Father?” (Matthew 10:29).
23
Wordsworth is right in identifying traces from Matthew (1880: 103). This is not,
of course, the only source for Hamlet’s words, as it is the same idea that is seen,
58 Chapter Three
shall not fall on the ground without your father”) in the collocation Hamlet
uses (“… there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”). However,
it is extremely difficult to actually understand the role that Hamlet attributes
to providence in these lines. Probably the obscurity and even confusion of
his reasoning about God’s designs are not alien to the debate over the issue
of predestination in the days of the Reformation. Shakespeare might not
want to take sides in the controversy of “the mysterious ways of
providence.” For Shakespeare the theological problem did not exist
because, as Edwards says, “[t]he recognition of ‘a divinity that shapes our
ends’ is Hamlet’s; not necessarily Shakespeare’s” (1983, 50).
Once again, this biblical collocation that Shakespeare proclaims through
his characters is more a literary device to express the contradictions that a
modern humanist living in old feudal Denmark would have to face rather
than the predestination conflict between Catholics and Calvinists in
Shakespeare’s Europe. It goes without saying that Hamlet, both as a
mediaeval prince of Christendom and as a humanistic Christian prince of
the sixteenth-century, had to believe in the Christian God, a circumstance
that, incidentally, Shakespeare would not have to necessarily share.
3. Conclusion
The fact that Shakespeare was quite familiar with the Bible is so well-
known and patent in his literary texts that it is difficult to explain why the
mere compilation of this type of collocations, quotes, allusions and echoes
has received and is still receiving so much academic attention. It is equally
difficult to justify the excessive, and often disproportionate, attention that
the moral or ethical explanation of the use of the biblical reference in
Shakespeare’s works has been paid, since such a purpose was quite
common, if not commonplace, in the literature of his time. As for the
enormous amount of criticism that uses the scriptural intertext to
demonstrate Shakespeare’s alleged religiosity or, even worse, to assign
him an Anglican adscription, or even a Roman Catholic one, one has to
say that it is simply out of place, if it deserves a place in literary criticism
at all.
As far as is known, from the scarce existing documentation on his life,
he kept aloof from the religious debate of his time. Although he does not

among others, in Luke 12:40 and in Acts 25:11. With these words, Shakespeare
characterises the setting, which is the scene of a mediaeval duel. For, although the
duels and the jousts were not well received by the Church, a part of the Christian
ritual was always present in their performance.
appear to have left out of his works any of the important things and themes
of his epoch, as a matter of fact he actually refused to touch upon what
was probably the most burning issue of the time: the religious debate
brought about by the Reformation. This exclusively stylistic use of biblical
and religious discourse is obviously the corollary of Shakespeare’s
deliberate distancing from the theological feud aroused by the
Reformation. It is certainly shocking irony that one of the writers who
delved most deeply into the collective mentality—as well as the historical
events—of his time should and did avoid the mentioned religious
controversy.
Indeed, whereas both the mechanical compilations of this kind of
references or the pro-Protestant and the pro-Catholic criticism abound, the
research on the stylistic purpose of biblical intertextuality in his works is
still very scarce. And yet, it is beyond all doubt that the only certain
function this intertext serves is that of enhancing characterization and
ambiance.
Only when one realises that the purpose of Shakespeare’s use of
biblical language is purely aesthetic do these apparent contradictions cease
to exist. Hence, it is surprising that those critics and editors that are not
caught in the trap of forcing a religious interpretation or sense of the
biblical discourse onto the play limit themselves to identify the source. It
is this aesthetic intention that undoubtedly accounts for Shakespeare’s use
of such a corpus of biblical discourse for enriching his dramatic and poetic
language, in general, and particularly that of Hamlet.
References
Alter, R. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books, 1981.
—. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
—. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard
University, 1987.
—. The Pleasures of Reading. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
—. The World of Biblical Literature. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
Bloom, H. Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the
Present. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
—. The Book of J. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Collins & Hannay. The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, in Ten
Volumes: “Hamlet”, “Othello”, “Pericles, Prince of Tyre”, vol. 10.
New York, 1923.
Douce, F. Illustrations of Shakespeare, and of Ancient Manners: With
Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakespeare; on the
60 Chapter Three
Collection of Popular Tales Entitle “Gesta Romanorum”; and on the

English Morris Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Longman,
Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.
Edwards, P. “Tragic Balance in Hamlet.” Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983):
43-52.
Frye, N. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
—. Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and
Literature”. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.
Geneva Bible. Geneva: Rowland Hall, 1560.
Hassel Jr. R. C. “Hamlet’s ‘Too, Too Solid Flesh’.” The Sixteenth Century
Journal 25.3 (Autumn) (1994): 609-622.
—. “Painted Women: Annunciation Motifs in Hamlet.” Comparative
Drama 32 (1998): 47-84.
Kettle, A. “From Hamlet to Lear.” Shakespeare in a Changing World.
Lawrence & Wishart, 1964.
Malone, E. The Plays of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes. London: H.
Baldwin, 1778.
Marx, S. Shakespeare and the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000 [2013].
Milward, P. Biblical Influences in Shakespeare’s Great Tragedies.
Bloomingtom and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Rodríguez Martín, G. A. “Shaw’s Subversion of Biblical Language.” In
Godly Heretics: Essays in Alternative Christianity in Literature and
Popular Culture, edited by Marc DiPaolo, 114-134. Jefferson:
McFarland & co., 2013.
Vermode, F. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.
—. The Sense of an Ending. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Wells, S., ed. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. London: Penguin Books,
1980 [2005].
Wordsworth, C. On Shakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible.
London: Smith, Elder & co., 1880.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF WELLERISMS

IN THE SIMPSONS AND THE STRATEGIES
FOR THEIR TRANSLATION INTO SPANISH
LUIS J. TOSINA FERNÁNDEZ
Around the world, The Simpsons may undoubtedly be considered one

of the best-known TV shows of all time, reaching all continents1 and being
the longest-running American cartoon series2 of all time. The influence
that the American entertainment industry has had, not only in the Western
world, but also in other societies, is unquestionable and The Simpsons
holds a position of privilege as one of the most influential shows in the
history of television.3 This fact is not without irony as it may, in fact, be
true that the influence exerted by The Simpsons is greater abroad than
within the USA.4
The popularity that the animated series acquired is such that the legacy
the show will leave behind, once it finally comes to an end, will transcend
the footage itself or the merchandise that has produced such a lucrative
business for the corporation owning the rights to their exploitation. The
Simpsons has even influenced the lexicon of its watchers, and not

1
There seems to be a lack of conclusive data about the exact amount of countries
where The Simpsons airs. However, according to Segers (2008) The Simpsons
Movie premiered in 72 countries, including the USA, which gives an idea of the
amount of countries where the television series is broadcast.
2
See Friedlander (2009).
3
The Telegraph (O’Donovan, 2015) lists The Simpsons in the top 10 best TV
sitcoms of all time. This is also acknowledged by other sources such as CNN (see
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/08/showbiz/tv/influential-tv-shows/). Finally, the
Daily Mail (Stevens, 2013) lists the show as the 46th most influential show of all
time.
4
As the fact that the show’s fictional beer of choice, i.e. “Duff,” was marketed in
several overseas countries (see Fox News 13 July 2015).
62 Chapter Four
necessarily only English-speaking audiences. It is a rather well-known fact

that the Oxford Dictionary of English included Homer Simpson’s
frustrated catchphrase “D’oh!” in 2001.5 But this is not the only expression
from The Simpsons that entered popular culture, as the interjection “meh,”
used to express apathy or disinterest, is also believed to have been made
popular by the show.6
Yet The Simpsons’ contribution to the heritage of the English
language, and possibly others, is not limited to simply a set of random
isolated words. There are numerous phrases that, even if not original to the
show, were made popular by it, such as Bart’s “Ay, caramba!” or “Eat my
shorts,” or even Nelson Muntz’s disdainful laughter “Ha-ha!”
The Simpsons is an interesting subject of analysis for phraseological
studies, both for its extensive use of idioms, as well as other types of PUs,
and for its vast amount of footage, which, if nothing else, presents more
opportunities for the scholar to find the material he or she is interested in.
It is true, however, that in spite of the propitiousness of the show for such
analyses, they have not been as common as may be expected. One
interesting exception is G. A. Rodríguez Martín’s article “The Simpsons:
Visual phraseological units and translation,” which deals with how some
PUs are represented graphically in the show and how these cases may be
perceived by foreign audiences with different levels of success. Rodríguez
Martín presents several different examples to prove his idea, such as “to
cry over spilled milk”; “to burn one’s bridges”; “a skeleton in the closet”;
“to catch someone red-handed”; or “having a silver tongue” among others.
According to his findings and analyses, Rodríguez Martín (2015, 22)
concludes that
(t)he illustrative collection of examples analyzed in this paper clearly

shows that the use of visual phraseological units is a relatively common
device in the stylistic repertoire of The Simpsons. This would imply that
the translation thereof should be carefully crafted, combining in the
translation process both the visual element and the figurative nature of
many of these PUs. This would bring out all the stylistic potential of the
script: humor, social critique, satire, and metalinguistic awareness, among
other elements.
In the present paper, however, the focus will be on a sui generis type of
phraseological unit: wellerisms, and how they are translated in the
peninsular Spanish version of The Simpsons. Wellerisms, of all the types

5
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1387335.stm.
6
Hann (2007).
Analysis of the Use of Wellerisms in The Simpsons 63
of phraseological units agreed upon by scholars, may be the units that

present the most idiosyncrasies. This, together with their unquestionable
tendency towards humor, makes them a rather suitable linguistic device
for use in a show of the nature of The Simpsons, while at the same time
posing many difficulties for the translator. It must be noted that wellerisms
seem to be more commonly found within the English-speaking context
than within the Spanish-speaking one, as the scarcity of scholarship on the
matter in Spanish, when compared with English, proves.7 This does not
mean, however, that there are not Spanish wellerisms; their use, however
“parece ser bastante raro en los países de habla española, y los
recopiladores deben estar atentos para apuntar cualquier ejemplo que
aparezca” (Orero Clavero 1997a, 462).8
1. Wellerisms: definition and characteristics

A wellerism is a type of phraseological unit articulated around a triadic
structure that includes an utterance, the identification of the speaker
verbalizing said utterance, and a comment on the situation in which the
utterance supposedly takes place. This can be illustrated by the following
example: “I feel for you deeply,” said the hungry man, probing about in
his soup bowl for a stray oyster (Mieder and Kingsbury 1994, 43).
First, the utterance is presented in quotation marks, as is customary for
direct speech, followed by the identification of the speaker, in this case,
the hungry man. Lastly, the hearer is told about the situation in which that
verbalization may have taken place. Yet, despite this structure being
considered the canonical form for wellerisms, it is rather common to find
examples of wellerisms lacking one of the aforementioned three elements.
As Mieder and Kingsbury (1994, x) put it:
There are, however, quite a few wellerisms that do not exhibit the third
element of the characteristic triadic structure, as in the following examples.
“The only trouble with my profession is that it is apt to be a rather
confining one,” as an ex-convict said. (no. 237)
“I was taken by a morsel,” says the fish. (no. 844)
“I’m bored stiff!” said the dead man. (no. 1262)

7
See the works of Jente (1947), Hoyos (1954), Castillo de Lucas (1956) or Orero
Clavero (1997a; 1997b; 2000) for Spanish scholarship on wellerisms.
8
Spanish wellerisms “seem to be quite rare in Spanish-speaking countries, and
collectors must be attentive in order to write down any instance that appears”
(Orero Clavero 1997a, 462; my translation).
64 Chapter Four
Nevertheless, it is not only the third element that may be omitted, as P.

Orero Clavero (1997, 462) points out, one may find
(a). Wellerismos perfectos, con las tres partes […].

(b). Wellerismos sin hablante o segunda parte […].
(c). Wellerismos sin tercera parte […].9
Something that may seem odd is the label chosen to name this
particular type of phraseme: wellerism. The name corresponds to a
character from C. Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club:
Sam Weller, who was distinctly fond of the use of a rather unique type of
formulaic expression, as can be seen in the numerous examples found in
the novel.10 But the term “wellerism” is not the only alternative that has
been proposed to name phrasemes following this structure. In his 1949
article, C. G. Loomis proposed the alternative “yankeeism” to name
American wellerisms, possibly in an attempt to further distance American
from British culture. As Loomis (1949, 2) explains:
The punning contagion undoubtedly spread from England and was

encouraged from this source. Native genius, however, bore the germs in
itself and spread the infection in constant fashion. Whatever inspiration
came from English writers, from Thomas Hood in particular and from
Charles Dickens in lesser degree, was soon adjusted to American utterance
and was carried on vigorously to the present time, as any attention to radio
comedians will bear ample evidence. The Yankee colouring is sufficiently
apparent to outweigh the modicum of English importations.

9
(a). Perfect wellerisms, with all three parts […].
(b). Wellerisms without the speaker or second part […].
(c). Wellerisms without the third part […] (Orero Clavero 1997, 462; my
translation).
10
Some examples of wellerisms employed by S. Weller in The Pickwick Papers
are:
—“Out vit it,” as the father said to the cold, ven he swallowed a farden. (Dickens,
1972: 235).
—“There’s nothin’ so refreshin’ as sleep, Sir,” as the servant-girl said afore she
drank the egg-cup-full o’ laudanum. (Dickens 1972, 292).
—“Hooroar for the principle,” as the money lender said ven he wouldn’t renew the
bill. (Dickens 1972, 577).
—“Come Sir, this is rather too rich,” as the young lady said ven she remonstrated
with the pastry cook, after he’d sold her a pork pie as had got nothin’ but fat inside
(Dickens 1972, 632)
—“Fine time for them as is well dropped up,” as the Polar Bear said to himself,
ven he was practising his skating. (Dickens 1972, 491).
It must be noted that, conversely to other types of PU, wellerisms

present a rather rigid structure. Thus, contrary to other types of PU, like
proverbs for instance, that may manifest in a myriad of lengths, structures,
and arrangements, wellerisms do not allow for such creativity and variety
of forms and they have to be articulated in a certain way, with little room
for manipulation, in order to fit in this phraseological category.
2. Examples of Wellerisms in The Simpsons

To begin with, it must be clarified that the use of wellerisms in The
Simpsons is far from a common phenomenon. Accordingly, from the over
five hundred episodes aired in twenty-seven seasons, just nine examples of
wellerisms have been found thus far. However, this lack of abundance is
no hindrance to drawing several rather interesting conclusions about the
way they have been translated into Castilian Spanish. The examples of
wellerisms detected in The Simpsons are the following:
(1) MARGE Your majesty, did you remember to invite Ned Flanders?
FLANDERS As the worm said to the plate of spaghetti, “I…”11
(2) BARNEY Eh! Ah! Nice try, boys! Now, as the roadrunner said to the
coyote, “meep meep”!12
(3) MARGE Ned Flanders, I can’t believe what you doodly did for us.
FLANDERS Well, seriously, Ocean said to the dirt, “I appreciate the
sediment.”13
(4) EX-HISTORY TEACHER As some guy said to some dude with a

beard, “Death to tyrants.”
MISS HOOVER You mean Booth and Lincoln?
EX-HISTORY TEACHER I’m not the history teacher. Anymore…14
(5) KENT BROCKMAN And prosecuting the case against Lisa is humble
country lawyer Wallace Brady.
WALLACE BRADY As the little chicken said to his mama, “I just hope I
don’t cluck up.” 15

11
No Loan Again, Naturally. LABF03. Writ. J. Westbrook. Dir. M. Kirkland. 8
Mar., 2009.
12
There’s Something About Marrying. GABF04. Writ. J. S. Burns. Dir. N. Kruse.
20 Feb., 2005.
13
No Loan Again, Naturally. LABF03. Writ. J. Westbrook. Dir. M. Kirkland. 8
Mar., 2009.
14
Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts. NABF17. Writ. T. Long. Dir. S. D. Moore. 2
Oct., 2011.
66 Chapter Four
(6) HOMER We make a great team.

FLANDERS Us? A team? As the salad said to the soup: I’m all mixed
up.16
(7) HOMER My stomach sticks way out in front and my—uh!

FLANDERS Well, as the tree said to the lumberjack, I’m stumped.17
(8) BART Well, something chewed through the cellar door and the floor is
covered with paw prints.
HOMER This can only mean one thing; Flanders, you ate my jerky!
FLANDERS As the oak said to the beagle, “you’re barkin’ up the wrong
tree.”18
(9) FLANDERS Howdy-do, strangers. Hop on in before you become a

couple runneth over.
MAUDE [to Ned] Ned, are you sure? They’re covered with mud.
FLANDERS [to Maude] And in that mud, I’m planting the seed of
friendship. [To Homer and Marge] Name’s Ned
FLANDERS As the elephant said to the peanut vendor, “toss those in my
trunk.”19
One of the facts that first stands out is that most wellerisms are used by
the same character: Ned Flanders, i.e. a total of six out of nine wellerisms
found. This fact, far from being a mere coincidence, is most likely a
conscious decision on the part of the scriptwriters in order to depict the
character of Flanders in a certain way, just as Dickens did with Sam
Weller, which led to the christening of this type of phraseme after the
character.
Another feature that characterizes the use of wellerisms in The
Simpsons is the fact that none of the examples found presents the full
triadic structure. Moreover, all nine examples lack the comment on the
context, the chunk that seems more easily and more frequently omitted.

15
The Monkey Suit. HABF14. Writ. J. Stewart Burns. Dir. S. R. Persi. 14 Mar.,
2006.
16
Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes. KABF17. Writ. K. Curran. Dir. L. Kramer. 28 Sept.,
2008.
17
Threehouse of Horror VI. 3F04. Writ. J. Swartzwelder, S. Tompkins and D. S.
Cohen. Dir. B. Anderson. 29 Oct., 1995.
18
Smoke On The Daugther. KABF08. Writ. B. Kimball. Dir. L. Kramer. 30 Mar.,
2008.
19
Dangerous Curves. KABF18. Writ. B. Kimball and I. Maxtone-Graham. Dir. M.
Faughnam. 9 Nov., 2008.
Additionally, wellerisms’ tendency towards humor seems particularly

suitable for their use in a show of the nature of The Simpsons.
3. Strategies for the translation of wellerisms

into Castilian Spanish
The tendency of wellerisms towards humor makes them an especially
hard type of phraseme for translation into Spanish, or any other foreign
language for that matter. The reason for this is that humor is highly
dependent on culture. Moreover, many comic remarks are on public
figures, historical or cultural events, or peoples’ daily habits, which may
vary a great deal between different societies. In order to cope with such
hardships, the following practices have been employed in the translation of
wellerisms into Castilian Spanish:
— Literal translation
— Adapted translation
— Mistranslation
— Total Modification
The existence of four different practices for the same purpose proves
the difficulty that this particular type of PU presents for translation into
foreign languages. This is even more remarkable if we take into account
that for a mere 9 occurrences detected, four different methods of
translation have been noticed. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that
this refers exclusively to the translation of wellerisms into Castilian
Spanish; thus, it can be neither confirmed nor denied in this paper that
these practices are the same for their translation into other languages or
even the Hispanic version of the series shown in Latin American countries.
The first process mentioned, literal translation, has an obvious
advantage: it transmits the message as was originally intended, without the
translators leaving their imprint. However, not all wellerisms allow for the
application of this system, as they would risk going unnoticed or not
producing the effect for which they are intended. The following excerpt is
a case of literal translation of a wellerism:
(10) MARGE Your majesty, did you remember to invite Ned Flanders?
FLANDERS As the worm said to the plate of spaghetti, “I…”
(10a) MARGE Majestad, ¿recordasteis invitar a Ned Flanders?

FLANDERS Como le dijo el gusano al platito de espaguetis: “yo… yo…”
68 Chapter Four
This extract refers to a rather well-known joke among English-

speaking people that is interrupted in the show by Ned Flanders being
knocked out by the garbage thrown at him by party-goers. As can be seen,
the joke is articulated as a wellerism, identifying the speaker, i.e. the
worm, and remaining unfinished due to the circumstances in which the
utterance takes place. However, it seems likely that, even if the joke were
complete, the comment would still be omitted. It must also be noted,
however, that in the actual joke the spaghetti noodle rejoices at having run
into an “orgy,” a joke that could hardly be expected from someone as
puritanical as Ned Flanders, who might have replaced it with a milder
version possibly swapping “orgy”20 for “party,” although this is only
speculation. Knowing this, the viewer is actually left wondering how
Flanders’ wellerism would have ended and why the scriptwriters put such
an obscene remark on the lips of, possibly, the most prudish character in
the show.
The second example of a literal translation of wellerisms is found in
the following:
(11) BARNEY Eh! Ah! Nice try, boys! Now, as the Roadrunner said to
the Coyote, “meep meep”!
(11a) BARNEY No ha colado chicos. Y ahora, como el Correcaminos le

dijo al Coyote: “meep, meep.”
In this example, another rather well-known cartoon of the Western

world, is quoted: the Roadrunner and his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote. The
continuous antics between the two, and Coyote’s unfortunate and
unsuccessful attempts to catch the Roadrunner, are a part of the childhood
memories of several generations of people on both sides of the Atlantic.
Thus, the direct translation poses no difficulty in this case and the effect
produced is the same in both languages. It would be necessary to confirm
whether this holds true without any kind of modification in other
languages. In this case, the humor relies on the fact that, since the
Roadrunner is a bird, all Barney does is reproduce the sound of that
particular type of bird, something that can hardly convey meaning other
than point out the fact that Barney outsmarted Bart and Milhouse, and did
not fall for their trap, which is the leitmotif of all the episodes of the
Roadrunner cartoons.

20
Funny Humour, Twitter post, August 17, 2011, 10:42 a.m.,
https://twitter.com/funnyhumour/status/103733499021889536.
The second strategy noted in the translation of wellerisms is that some

sort of adaptation has been applied to the Spanish translation. There seem
to be two main reasons for this practice: an attempt to produce a more
idiomatic phraseme in the target language or the necessity to make some
kind of cultural adaptation so the audience is able to grasp what is meant.
In the three examples of this practice mentioned above, both reasons
become evident.
The first instance of the use of a wellerism in The Simpsons that
requires a slight adaptation for translation into Castilian Spanish can be
observed in the following piece of dialog extracted from the show:
(12) MARGE Ned Flanders, I can’t believe what you doodly did for us.
FLANDERS Well, seriously, Ocean said to the dirt, “I appreciate the
sediment.”
(12a) MARGE Ned Flanders, lo que has hecho por no nosotros no tiene
nombrecillo.
FLANDERS Como el mar le dijo a la tierra: “comparto sentimentillos.”
This case is rather amusing. On the one hand, the punning intentions of
the English version can be observed, in which Flanders plays with the
words “sentiment” and “sediment.” Nevertheless, this is lost in the Spanish
translation, in which “sentimentillos,” a diminutive for “sentimientos,” i.e.
feelings, was chosen instead of “sedimentillos,” a diminutive for
“sedimento,” i.e. sediment, thus voiding the pun. The shocking aspect is
that the same pun could have been kept in the Spanish version in order to
more faithfully transmit the piece of dialog intended in the original
version. In this case, the translators must have considered that keeping the
original version might have been misleading or that it was too idiomatic a
statement for its preservation word-for-word in Spanish, a decision that is
arguable to say the least.
In the second example of the adapted translation of wellerisms, the
adaptation has been carried out for similar reasons, even though, in this
case, it seems more justified:
(13) KENT BROCKMAN And prosecuting the case against Lisa is humble
country lawyer Wallace Brady.
WALLACE BRADY As the little chicken said to his mama, “I just hope I
don’t cluck up.”
(13a) KENT BROCKMAN Y como fiscal del caso se encuentra el humilde

abogado del pueblo Wallace Brady.
70 Chapter Four
WALLACE BRADY Como le dijo el patito a su mamá: “espero no meter

la pata.”
Here, in the English version, attorney Brady cites a cute wellerism that
hides an inappropriate expression in order to gain the favor of the jury.
This wellerism, in which a “little chicken” is quoted, ends with a
euphemism avoiding the use of an obscene cuss, i.e. “fuck up.”21 It is
interesting, though, that in spite of the complete modification of the
phraseologism included in the wellerism in its translation into Spanish,
that the translators managed to include a Spanish idiom that is rather
similar both in meaning and the semantic field of some its elements.
The choice for the Spanish version, “meter la pata,” is a very well-
known and well-established idiom,22 at least in peninsular Spanish, which,
according to the DRAE23 in its online version, means “hacer o decir
alguien algo inoportuno o equivocado.”24 Hence, though there may be
other idioms with identical meaning, the choice of this one was most likely
a conscious one, as a careful analysis of its constituents may prove. Taking
into account the fact that “pata” in Spanish means “leg,” generally in an
animal or a piece of furniture as is used in the Spanish idiom, but can also
the he name given to a female duck, may establish a connection between
the English and Spanish idioms employed in the different versions.
The third, and last, example of adaptation in the translation of a
wellerism can be observed in the following excerpt:
(14) EX-HISTORY TEACHER As some guy said to some dude with a

beard, “Death to tyrants.”
MISS HOOVER You mean Booth and Lincoln?
EX-HISTORY TEACHER I’m not the history teacher. Anymore…
(14a) EXPROFESOR DE HISTORIA Como le dijo uno a un tío con

barba: “muerte a los tiranos.”
SITA HOOVER ¿Te refieres al asesino de Lincoln?

21
The use of profanity on American television was banned by the Title 18 of the
United States Code, Section 1464 (see https://www.fcc.gov/reports-
research/guides/obscenity-indecency-profanity-faq), which was originally passed
for radio broadcasts in 1948. Spanish television is much more permissive about
this matter.
22
As of 3 Feb. 2016, the CREA corpus yields 272 uses of this expression both in
literary and journalistic texts. Google, however, yields around 553,000 results.
23
See “Meter alguien la pata [Def. 1]” (Real Academia Española 2013). Retrieved
February 2, 2016 from http://dle.rae.es/?id=S71hGRM|S72dH32.
24
“[To] do or say someone something inappropriate or wrong” (my translation).
EXPROFESOR DE HISTORIA Me temo que ya no soy el profesor de

historia.
In this case the adaptation is due not so much to an idiomatic matter,

but a cultural one. In spite of the unquestionable influence that the United
States of America has exerted on Western culture, there are aspects of its
history that may remain obscure to the general European public.
Therefore, even though an American with an average level of culture
should identify Booth as a reference to John Wilkes Booth, Abraham
Lincoln’s assassin, it seems likely that most viewers outside the USA
might miss the reference if a subtle clarification were not included.
Consequently, the name Booth is substituted in the Spanish version for a
rather circumlocutory “Lincoln’s assassin.”
The third way in which wellerisms are translated into Castilian Spanish
may actually be considered a failed translation, as the contraposition of the
Spanish and English versions proves that either the meaning of the
translation has little or nothing to do with what the original version is
meant to convey or it is done in such a way that it fails to transmit the
original idea. This has been found in two different instances, the first of
which is the following:
(15) HOMER We make a great team.

FLANDERS Us? A team? As the salad said to the soup: I’m all mixed up.
(15a) HOMER Formamos un gran equipo.

FLANDERS ¿Nosotros? ¿Un equipo? Como le dijo la ensalada a la
sopita, tengo nausillas.
Here, it becomes quite evident that the translator has misinterpreted

what Flanders means to say. Thus, “mixed up” has been translated into
Spanish as “feeling nauseous,” a translation that is utterly wrong as it
should have been translated as “being confused,” which is the translation
found in dictionaries.25 It is rather surprising that, in some cases the
translation of the original wellerism has been modified altogether, while in
others a great effort has been made to preserve it, resulting in a confusing
or incorrect translation.
Another example of a translation of doubtful accuracy can be observed
in the following fragment:

25
The most adequate definition for “mixed up” in this context states that it means
to be “confused, for example because you have too many different details to
remember or think about.” See “Mixed up [Def. 3]” (Summers et al. 2003, 1056).
72 Chapter Four
(16) HOMER My stomach sticks way out in front and my—uh!

FLANDERS Well, as the tree said to the lumberjack, I’m stumped.
(16a) HOMER Estoy como hinchado. El estómago me asoma por delante y

por—¡uy!
FLANDERS Estoy como le dijo que estaba el árbol al leñador, perplejito.
This piece is quite similar to the previous one. Here the defective
translation is also caused by the translator’s intention to remain as close to
the original as possible. However, the pun present in the original is lost in
the translation. As Roget’s Thesaurus notes,26 “stumped” is a synonym for
“perplexed,” which is the word that has been chosen for the Spanish
translation. Moreover, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English27 also states that a “stump” is “the bottom part of a tree that is left
in the ground after the rest of it has been cut down”, thus propitiating the
pun with tree and lumberjack. This is obviously lost in the Spanish version
as “perplejo” could hardly be connected to “árbol,” i.e. tree, and “leñador,”
i.e. lumberjack, by anyone who is unaware of the original dialog.
Lastly, there are another couple of examples in which the wellerism
has been modified completely with different degrees of success. The
reason for this is most likely the intention of the translators to produce a
piece that can actually cause some humorous effect in the target language.
Here, linguistic, cultural, and social factors may play a role in the
questionable decision of changing such sensitive elements as phrasemes.
Furthermore, this practice may go unnoticed by viewers without a
profound knowledge of English. Yet, for someone familiar with English
phraseology, these modifications stand out and may sound artificial and
inaccurate.
The first case of a complete modification of a wellerism in The
Simpsons can be observed in the following piece:
(17) BART Well, something chewed through the cellar door and the floor
is covered with paw prints.
HOMER This can only mean one thing; Flanders, you ate my jerky!
FLANDERS As the oak said to the beagle, “you’re barkin’ up the wrong
tree.”
(17a) BART Bueno, algo ha roído la puerta del sótano y el suelo está lleno
de huellas de patas.

26
See “Unintelligibility [Adj.]” (Davidson 2004, 206).
27
See “Stump [Def. 1]” (Summers 2003, 1652).
HOMER Eso sólo puede decir una cosa: ¡Flanders, te has comido my
cecina!
FLANDERS Como la matrona dijo al mocito: “estás haciendo pipí fuera
del tiesto.”
Here, two idioms, with rather opposite meanings, are presented as

equivalent. On the one hand, the English version employs the rather well-
known “to bark up the wrong tree,” which, according to the Oxford
Dictionary of Idioms (Ayto 2009, 18) means to “pursue a mistaken or
misguided line of thought or course of action.” On the other hand, in the
Spanish translation, the translators decided to go with a milder version of
“mear fuera del tiesto,”28 “hacer pipí”29 being the euphemism that little
children use for the act of urinating, whereas “mear” is a more impolite,
cruder synonym. The issue with this adaptation is not so much that the
phrasemes employed are different, but the fact that they do not have an
equivalent meaning. As a consequence, even though an idiomatic
translation has been successfully presented in the target language, the
meaning conveyed is not exactly what the scriptwriters meant in the
original version, given that, as the online version of the DRAE points out,
“mear fuera del tiesto” means “Salirse de la cuestión, decir algo que no
viene al caso.”30 Yet, it must also be pointed out that someone unfamiliar
with the original would not notice the oddity.
Likewise, another example of a complete modification of a wellerism
in The Simpsons has been detected, which can be found in the following
excerpt:
(18) FLANDERS Howdy-do, strangers. Hop on in before you become a

couple runneth over.
MAUDE [to Ned] Ned, are you sure? They’re covered with mud.
FLANDERS [to Maude] And in that mud, I’m planting the seed of
friendship. [To Homer and Marge] He-he… Name’s Ned Flanders. As the
elephant said to the peanut vendor, “toss those in my trunk.”
(18a) FLANDERS Holita, desconocidos. Subid antes de que seáis una

pareja atropelladita.
MAUDE [a Ned] Ned, ¿estás seguro? Están cubiertos de barro.

28
i.e. “to piss outside the pot.”
29
i.e. “to pee” or “to go wee wee.”
30
“To get off the point, to say something that is not relevant” (my translation). See
“Mear fuera del tiesto [Def. 1]” (Real Academia Española 2013). Retrieved
February 2, 2016 from http://dle.rae.es/?id=ZjD1ubu|ZjD4YlL.
74 Chapter Four
FLANDERS [a Maud] Y en ese barro pienso sembrar la semilla de la

amistad. [A Homer y Marge] Je-Je… Soy Ned Flanders. Como dijo el
poeta: “guardadla en el baúl de los sueños.”
In this particular case, the modification has been motivated not so

much for cultural or social reasons, but for linguistic ones. Whereas in
English “trunk” is used both to refer to “the very long nose of an
elephant,”31 as well as to “the part at the back of a car where you can put
bags, tools etc.”;32 the words for both ideas are different in Spanish, the
former being “trompa” and the latter “maletero,” which removes the
possibility of transposing the pun to Spanish. Accordingly, the translators
decided to provide an alternative that, surprisingly enough, if the Spanish
version had been the original, would have allowed for its direct translation
into English, as “baúl” is a Spanish word that refers to yet another
meaning of the English trunk, i.e. “a very large box made of wood or
metal, in which clothes, books etc. are stored or packed for travel.”33
However, there is a notable difference: whereas the phrase used in the
English version is a well-established phraseme in English, the Spanish
phrase seems to have been created ad hoc, as it is not acknowledged as a
phraseme, regardless of how frequent a collocation it may be.34
Interestingly enough, the addendum “como dijo el poeta,”35 i.e. “as the
poet said,” has been added in order to preserve the structure of the
wellerism found in the original. This decision may be questioned as, after
all, the translators decided to modify that whole line of dialog.
4. Conclusions
From the careful observation and contraposition of the examples in the
English and Spanish versions of The Simpsons, which have been analyzed,
several conclusions may be drawn. To begin with, as has already been
mentioned, it seems rather surprising that, for the nine examples found,
four different strategies for translation have been detected, which is clearly
indicative of the difficulty of translating this type of phraseme into foreign
languages. In this regard, the different strategies employed by translators

31
See “Trunk [Def. 3]” (Summers et al. 2003, 1781).
32
See “Trunk [Def. 2]” (Summers et al. 2003, 1781). It must be noted, though, that
this term is mostly employed with this meaning in AmE.
33
See “Trunk [Def. 5]” (Summers et al. 2003, 1781).
34
As of 4 Feb. 2016, the CREA corpus does not yield any results for the “baúl de
los sueños” search. However a Google search yields around 103,000 hits.
35
This collocation yields a meagre 13 hits in the CREA Corpus.
may cause PUs to be recognized with different levels of success, both in

the process of actually acknowledging the wellerism as such, as well as in
how humorous it is found by foreign viewers.
Another feature that stands out in the use of wellerisms in The
Simpsons is the systematic elision of one of the elements making up the
triadic structure that is generally considered to be characteristic. More
concretely, in the nine examples mentioned, it can be seen that the
comment that identifies the situation in which the wellerism was originally
supposed to take place is omitted in all nine.
The fact that most wellerisms are employed by the same character, Ned
Flanders, cannot be coincidental. The history of literature is full of
characters whose personality was defined by the creators through their
repeated use of certain linguistic formulae. For instance, one can think of
Sancho Panza’s use of proverbs in Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Mrs
Slipslop’s use of malapropisms in H. Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, just to
name a couple of examples. This is, obviously, not only found in literature.
Television shows are also riddled with characters whose use of language is
one of their main trademarks.
Finally, it could be stated that the difficulty of translating wellerisms,
due to social or cultural factors and the inefficiency of some of the
strategies employed, restrains their ability to enter new languages and
societies. Furthermore, it may explain, at least in part, why there is such a
scarcity of scholarship on the matter in Spanish and why wellerisms are
still considered to be a more natural linguistic occurrence in English and
English-speaking countries than in some others especially when compared
to other types of phrasemes that, despite originating in a certain language,
have found their way into other languages and societies, as happens with
many proverbs or idioms, just to name two examples. Thus, as mentioned
in the introduction to this article, wellerisms may indeed be seen as a
linguistic occurrence more commonly found within English-speaking
societies than in some others and a type of phraseme that, as has been
shown, requires a great deal of creativity and conscientious work on the
part of the translators to appropriately rephrase them in another language.
Episodes mentioned
Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts. NABF17. Writ. T. Long. Dir. S. D.
Moore. October 2, 2011.
Dangerous Curves. KABF18. Writ. B. Kimball and I. Maxtone-Graham.
Dir. M. Faughnam. November 9, 2008.
76 Chapter Four
No Loan Again, Naturally. LABF03. Writ. J. Westbrook. Dir. M.

Kirkland. March 8, 2009.
Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes. KABF17. Writ. K. Curran. Dir. L. Kramer.
September 28, 2008.
Smoke On The Daugther. KABF08. Writ. B. Kimball. Dir. L. Kramer.
March 30, 2008.
The Monkey Suit. HABF14. Writ. J. Stewart Burns. Dir. S. R. Persi. March
14, 2006.
There’s Something About Marrying. GABF04. Writ. J. S. Burns. Dir. N.
Kruse. February 20, 2005.
Threehouse of Horror VI. 3F04. Writ. J. Swartzwelder, S. Tompkins and
D. S. Cohen. Dir. B. Anderson. October 29, 1995.
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Folklore 18/4 (1959): 287-293.
—. The proverb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931.
Whiting, B. J. “American wellerisms of the golden age.” American Speech
20 (1945): 3-11.

CHAPTER FIVE
EL HABLA POPULAR EN LA LITERATURA

DEL PRIMER TERCIO DEL SIGLO XX:
EL EJEMPLO DE EXTREMADURA
GUADALUPE NIETO CABALLERO
Introducción
Entre finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX irrumpen en el
panorama literario español escritores—en su mayoría, poetas—que
incluyen en sus obras remedos del habla popular de las zonas en que
viven. Esta tendencia tuvo repercusión en todas las regiones españolas,
aunque con distinta intensidad en cada una de ellas. En el caso de
Extremadura, cuyas hablas, por lo general, no eran aprobadas socialmente,
se van asentando las bases de una literatura con tintes regionales que se
convertirá en un símbolo identificativo para sus gentes.
La peculiaridad de estos autores reside en el hecho de que incluyen en
sus textos rasgos fonéticos y léxicos—y morfosintácticos en menor
medida—del habla cotidiana de su entorno. Como precisa Manuel Alvar
(1971), la literatura con dialectalismos “es aportación al quehacer común
con tinte o sabor local”. La lengua hablada es menos reflexiva, más
espontánea y connatural al hombre que la variedad escrita, donde es más
evidente el reconocimiento de la norma del sistema de la lengua.
En esta línea, en este trabajo se aborda el análisis del arquetipo de las
hablas extremeñas en la literatura del primer tercio del siglo XX a partir de
un corpus de autores que incluyen el habla popular en sus obras: José
María Gabriel y Galán, Luis Chamizo y Antonio Reyes Huertas. En el
intento de reflejar el habla de su entorno, los escritores cuidan de manera
especial la fonética. La variedad regional aparece en las obras estudiadas
como un elemento connotativo que enmarca el ámbito geográfico, realza
los tintes realistas y la división de clases sociales en el plano de la
caracterización.
80 Chapter Five
1. Los antecedentes inmediatos del uso de la lengua

popular en la literatura del siglo XX
Parece obvio afirmar que la lengua es siempre un reflejo de la cultura y
forma de vida de una colectividad y que será, por tanto, “el inexcusable
punto de partida de los creadores que se sirven de ella como medio
esencial para la realización de su obra artística” (Sánchez Lobato 1994,
235). En la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, el idealismo propugnado por los
románticos dejó paso al sentido práctico de los realistas. El realismo
incorpora a la literatura los nuevos espacios decimonónicos: las ciudades,
las fábricas y los mercados, pero también el campo; se pasa así de lo
subjetivo a lo objetivo, a lo cotidiano. Y es ahí, en lo cotidiano, donde
cobran relevancia los usos lingüísticos de las gentes que pueblan las
novelas y textos realistas.
Este interés por lo popular en la ficción decimonónica no era nuevo,
pero sí la conciencia que comienza a surgir entonces en algunos autores,
sobre todo en aquellos procedentes de entornos cuya variedad no contaba
con una aceptación o reconocimiento amplios. El propio Unamuno (1904)
fue consciente del papel que el habla popular podía desempeñar en la
revitalización del lenguaje literario al exponer que
No se conoce a uno sino por lo que dice y hace, y el alma de un pueblo

sólo en su literatura y su historia cabe conocerla—tal es el común sentir—.
Es hacedero, sin embargo, conocer a un pueblo por debajo de la historia, en
su oscura vida diaria, y por debajo de toda literatura, en sus
conversaciones.
La dicotomía entre literatura y lengua tiene su correlato en las nociones

unamunianas de historia e intrahistoria: en la lengua se enmarca el espíritu
de una sociedad y es el germen de toda creación que hace la historia de un
pueblo. Con la reivindicación de esas conversaciones—del habla popular,
por tanto—se busca rescatar la sencillez y riqueza de la lengua y la
constatación de un estilo “orgánico y no mecánico”: “Todo escritor que
tenga estilo, verdadero estilo, no manera, que cree orgánicamente y no que
construya mecánicamente la expresión de su sentir y de su pensar y su
imaginar, ha dicho antes lo que ha escrito después. Si no a otro, se lo ha
dicho a sí mismo” (Unamuno 1921).
Algunos de los escritores canónicos que también han reflejado el habla
popular en sus obras son Benito Pérez Galdós y José María Pereda. Galdós
califica estas formas de “crudezas de estilo popular y aflamencado”
(Fortunata y Jacinta, I, v, i), y así lo vemos en distintas intervenciones de
determinados personajes populares en Fortunata y Jacinta. El autor
El habla popular en la literatura del primer tercio del siglo XX 81
canario introduce numerosas formas—o “deformaciones”, siguiendo la

terminología empleada por Fernández (1978)—fonéticas, morfológicas y
de léxico que difieren de la lengua estándar. Estas formas suelen aparecer
como propias del habla de las clases humildes del Madrid decimonónico,
la mayoría coincidentes con las de otras regiones, lo que vendría a
corroborar la presencia de vulgarismos, más que de dialectalismos, en la
recreación de las hablas populares en la literatura. A ello nos referiremos
más adelante. Un rasgo que encontramos en Fortunata y Jacinta, por
ejemplo, es el trueque de líquidas, esto es, el cambio de l en r tras oclusiva
labial o velar, presente también en el sur y occidente peninsular, como
vemos en branco “blanco” (I, ix, v) o blinco “brinco” (III, iii, v) de la
citada novela galdosiana, pero también en “La juerza del queré” de
Chamizo, por ejemplo: “entre medio d’una luna, azul y branca”.
Las divergencias entre las modalidades hablada y escrita son advertidas
también por Pereda, que intenta novelar la realidad viva de su entorno. El
cántabro recogió el dialecto montañés en algunas de sus novelas, como
puede apreciarse en el siguiente fragmento del capítulo VIII de Peñas
arriba:
Estaba “amañandu aqueyu” porque le daba en cara verlo “en abertal”. […]
después otros dos de los “apareaos” con él, y luego “otros de los arrimaus a
eyus”, y por último, se había dicho, “a las primeras celleriscas que vengan,
o a la primera res que jocique una miaja pa lamberse estus verdinis, se
esborrega el moriu por aquí”. Y así había sucedido. (Pereda 1988 [1895])
Benito Pérez Galdós confiesa en el prólogo a El sabor de la tierruca,

de Pereda, que “Una de las mayores dificultades con que tropieza la
novela en España consiste en lo poco hecho y trabajado que está el
lenguaje literario para reproducir los matices de la conversación
corriente”, algo que, según sus palabras, Pereda ha conseguido superar con
creces, pues ha sabido introducir el lenguaje popular en el literario
“fundiéndolo con arte y conciliando formas que nuestros retóricos más
eminentes consideraban incompatibles” (Galdós 1992, 61-62).
Juan Ramón Jiménez y Manuel Machado en Huelva y Sevilla, Miguel
Hernández en la Vega Baja del Segura, o Benjamín Jarnés en Aragón,
citando solo a algunos, también se han servido de voces regionales y
terruñeras en sus obras. Una mención destacada merecen escritores como
los salmantinos Luis Maldonado (1860-1926) y Saturnino Galache (1871-
1920), muy emparentados con la variedad de Gabriel y Galán, o José
María Acebal (1815-1895), que trató de recuperar la literatura en bable.
Por su parte, la producción de Vicente Medina (1866-1937) en Murcia se
82 Chapter Five
erige en un referente de la poesía regionalista y “la única poesía dialectal

que—con Gabriel y Galán—tiene alguna dignidad” (Alvar, 1971).
2. La reivindicación de las hablas extremeñas

en la literatura
Extremadura fue una de las regiones que reivindicó la necesidad de
transmitir y conservar con la mayor lealtad los testimonios de sus gentes,
su forma de vida, sus costumbres, en definitiva, su folclore. Esta atención
pronto encontró cauce con la creación de la Sociedad El folk-lore
Frexnense en 1882, sociedad creada a imagen y semejanza de El Folk-lore
Andaluz, proyecto liderado por don Antonio Machado y Álvarez. Un año
más tarde, en 1883, ve la luz el primer número de la revista, “con el mismo
nombre, y con la finalidad de recuperar y dignificar el saber popular”
(Salvador Plans 1998, 807). En esta línea surge también en 1899 la Revista
de Extremadura, en cuyas páginas se recogieron numerosos “romances,
canciones, juegos infantiles, etc., en los que abundan las citadas formas
propias de las hablas extremeñas” (Salvador Plans 1998, 813). Precisamente,
en sus páginas aparecen los primeros poemas de José María Gabriel y
Galán en variedad altoextremeña, como veremos.
Los primeros testimonios en los que se plasma esa voluntad de reflejar
el habla popular de la región conviene situarlos entre los años 60 y 70 del
siglo XIX. Ya en la década de los 90 y principios del siglo XX comienzan
a destacar, entre otros autores, Publio Hurtado (1850-1929), Rafael García
Plata de Osma (1870-1918), José María Gabriel y Galán (1870-1905),
Diego María Crehuet (1873-1956) o Luis Grande Baudesson (1874-
1956)1. Esta tendencia literaria arrancó con determinación en la región
extremeña, y ha llegado con vitalidad hasta hoy, donde no son pocos los
autores que hacen uso del dialecto2—social o geográfico—, tanto por

1
Para un comentario más detallado, consúltense las siguientes referencias: (1) A.
Salvador Plans (1998): “Dialectología y folclore en Extremadura en el tránsito del
siglo XIX al XX”, Revista de Estudios Extremeños, LIV/3, pp. 807-831. (2) A.
Salvador Plans (2006): “El habla popular en los escritores extremeños
finiseculares”, en A. Salvador Plans y Á. Valverde (eds.), Gabriel y Galán, época
y obra, Mérida, Editora Regional de Extremadura, pp. 249-279.
2
Obviamos aquí las diferencias terminológicas y conceptuales entre lengua,
dialecto y habla. Remitimos, no obstante, a los siguientes artículos de Manuel
Alvar: (1) M. Alvar (1961). “Hacia los conceptos de lengua, dialecto y hablas.”.
Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica XV (1961): 51-60. (2) M. Alvar (1979).
“Lengua, dialecto y otras cuestiones conexas.” LEA I/1 (1979): 5-29. (3) M. Alvar
medio de los personajes que articulan la obra, como siendo un elemento

más de la propia creación literaria.
En un caso u otro, la variedad popular aparece en el texto literario
cuando el autor decide que la narración o los diálogos contenidos en ella
se viertan concretando la variedad hablada en un área geográfica (variedad
diatópica), una clase social (variedad diastrática), una época determinada
(variedad diacrónica) o una forma de hablar individual (idiolecto). Es, por
tanto, un efecto estilístico que el autor emplea de manera deliberada y que
puede equipararse con cualquier otro recurso literario como el empleo de
figuras, la sintaxis o el tipo de narración.
En este trabajo nos centramos en textos—poemas, principalmente—de
escritores que recogieron la variedad extremeña en el primer tercio del
siglo XX, imbuidos de ese espíritu realista al que nos hemos referido más
arriba. Para caracterizar las hablas de Extremadura se ha recurrido con
frecuencia, y entre otras opciones, a esta literatura. No obstante, este modo
de proceder es poco aconsejable, ya que la interpretación de los datos debe
llevarse a cabo con ciertas reservas. No es sencillo que estos escritos
reflejen de manera fiel la realidad del habla que pretenden imitar, pues
debe tenerse en cuenta, sin ir más lejos, que Gabriel y Galán, Chamizo o
Reyes Huertas, por citar a los autores de cuyas creaciones nos valemos en
este trabajo, son escritores, no lingüistas, por lo que no podemos exigir en
sus obras un calco de la variedad regional.
Asimismo, antes de adentrarnos en el análisis de estas obras, hemos de
precisar que cuando nos referimos a la variedad regional en este trabajo,
no lo hacemos desde una perspectiva integral, pues es evidente que no hay
“una uniformidad desde Tornavacas hasta Tentudía ni desde El Gordo hasta
Badajoz” (Rebollo 2006, 2048), por lo que cada autor entenderá como habla
extremeña la propia de su entorno. De ahí, que las soluciones propuestas por
José María Gabriel y Galán, al norte de Cáceres, difieran de las de Luis
Chamizo y Antonio Reyes Huertas, en la Baja Extremadura. Empleamos,
por tanto, el concepto de variedad regional teniendo en cuenta estas
limitaciones y siendo conscientes de la diversidad de las hablas en la región.
2.1. Corpus de estudio

Abordar de manera integral el corpus de autores que escriben en la
variedad lingüística extremeña es una labor que escapa de los límites de
este capítulo. Por ello, hemos acotado nuestro trabajo al primer tercio del

(1970). “Lengua y dialecto: delimitaciones históricas estructurales.” Arbor
LXXI/299.
84 Chapter Five
siglo XX, cuando el espíritu regionalista que invade a la literatura, y con

él, el auge del folclore, adquiere un impulso inusitado. Como ya se ha
comentado, esta tendencia no surge entonces, pero sí que lo es la
conciencia de caracterizar y reivindicar a una colectividad.
En este trabajo nos centramos en la producción de José María Gabriel
y Galán (1870-1905), autor que desde sus inicios atrajo el interés del
público general y de conocidos escritores y pensadores de su época como
Emilia Pardo Bazán, Juan Maragall o Unamuno, que prologaron sus obras
o le conminaron a seguir cultivando esa poesía. Aún hoy sigue siendo un
referente en la poesía no solo regional, sino también nacional, sobre todo
desde la perspectiva de escritor preocupado por una poesía repleta de
rasgos populares y dialectales. El escritor de Guijo de Granadilla
(Cáceres)3, originario de Frades de la Sierra (Salamanca), dio a la prensa
numerosos poemas en variedad altoextremeña, algunos de los cuales
fueron recogidos posteriormente en el volumen de Extremeñas (1903).
Gabriel y Galán, no obstante, escribió la mayor parte de sus textos en
lengua castellana. Dados los propósitos de este trabajo, nos centramos
únicamente en el libro de Extremeñas.
Luis Chamizo (1894-1945), por su parte, puede considerarse el
continuador de la labor literaria de Gabriel y Galán. Al igual que el autor
de Extremeñas, sus obras están escritas tanto en castellano como en la
variedad bajoextremeña de la zona de Guareña4, de donde era natural. Esta
circunstancia conduce a apreciar diferencias entre el habla recogida por
Gabriel y Galán en sus textos, ampliamente relacionada con las hablas
leonesas—y también con rasgos de las hablas meridionales—, y el habla
de la zona de Luis Chamizo, más emparentada con las hablas del sur,
aunque tampoco exenta de fenómenos procedentes del leonés. Los textos
en los que se aprecia una mayor conciencia lingüística son El miajón de
los castúos (1921) y Las brujas (1932). El primero, un poemario, dio lugar
posteriormente a la denominación popular de “castúo” para referirse a las
hablas de Extremadura. Las brujas resulta doblemente interesante para
nuestro trabajo por la recreación de las hablas populares y por tratarse de
una obra de teatro, donde el dialogismo permite corroborar el desarrollo de
estas hablas entre los personajes.
Por último, el tercer autor que hemos abordado en este trabajo es
Antonio Reyes Huertas (1887-1952). Los personajes de sus novelas se
comunican en la variedad extremeña de la comarca de La Serena. En ellas

3
Población situada al norte de la provincia de Cáceres, a 103 km de Cáceres y a
118 de Salamanca.
4
Población situada en el norte de la provincia de Badajoz, a 24 km de Mérida.
se aprecia la diferenciación entre clases sociales, entre otras características,

por el uso que sus personajes hacen de la lengua. La variedad local suele
aparecer en boca de los humildes y recios campesinos. En este trabajo
hemos analizado el habla popular de La sangre de la raza (1919) y Los
humildes senderos (1920).
Se ha optado por la compilación de un corpus reducido pero
homogéneo del que extraer y analizar los principales rasgos de las hablas
extremeñas y cuyos patrones se han ido repitiendo en otras obras y
escritores coetáneos y posteriores.
2.2. La finalidad del habla popular en los textos

de la variedad extremeña
Los textos con los que trabajamos exhiben variedades dialectales cuyas
funciones son, mayormente, una mezcla entre las funciones mimética y
simbólica propuestas por Christian Mair (1992). Con la función mimética
el autor pretende reflejar de la manera más realista y verosímil posible el
habla de un personaje. Ese idiolecto se forma a partir de las variedades
diátopicas y diastráticas, así como de la edad y circunstancias culturales
del individuo. El dialecto se erige de esta forma en un reflejo de la
sociedad en su tiempo y espacio. El escritor se presenta como un
observador que se limita a reproducir la manera en que se expresan sus
personajes en su propio contexto.
Por su parte, la función simbólica es la que se sirve de la manera de
hablar de un personaje con un valor caracterizador, no ya solo del
personaje, sino de su entorno: la forma de hablar de un personaje
simboliza lo que es. El uso del dialecto permite establecer oposiciones y
diferencias entre los personajes, pero también sirve al autor para
posicionarse y expresar su visión del mundo. El escritor puede por tanto
transmitir ideas positivas o negativas sobre algún personaje o circunstancia
concreta, puede conducir al lector desde el humor, la simpatía o la
compasión hasta la condescendencia, el rechazo o la antipatía. Ambas
funciones suelen aparecer unidas en los textos que analizamos.
En el caso de los autores que tratamos, el uso de la variedad lingüística
extremeña se plantea desde dos perspectivas. De un lado, como la
expresión del poeta o narrador en textos monodialectales (Rabadán 1991;
Hurtado Albir 2001), como vemos en buena parte de los textos de
Extremeñas de Gabriel y Galán, o en El miajón de los castúos, de
Chamizo.
86 Chapter Five
(1)
¡Qué güeno es el Cristu
de la ermita aquella!
Pa jacel más alegri mi vía,
ni dineros me dio ni jacienda,
polque ice la genti que sabi
que a dicha no está en la riqueza.
Ni me jizu marqués, ni menistro,
ni alcaldi siquiera,
pa podel dil a misa el primero
con la ensinia los días de fiesta
y sentalmi a la vera del cura
jaciendu fachenda.
(“El Cristu benditu”, Extremeñas)
(2)
Contentete me puse
y alborotao
al sabé que mi suegra
l’había diñao;
pero mi mujé quiso
que yo sufriera,
y al parir a mi hija,
parió a mi suegra:
¡Qué mala pata
tienen algunos hombres
cuando se casan!
(“Del fandango extremeño”, El miajón de los castúos)
De otro lado, el autor escribe en dialecto como forma de proyección de

la cultura y estrato social de un personaje o grupo social y su oposición
con otros. Son los textos parcialmente monodialectales (Rabadán 1991,
Hurtado Albir, 2001), como vemos en “Los postres de la merienda” de
Gabriel y Galán o en fragmentos de La sangre de la raza, de Reyes
Huertas. Esta terminología está muy relacionada, a su vez, con el
planteamiento de Brook (1978), que considera que existe el dialecto en la
literatura pero también la literatura en dialecto. La diferencia entre ambas
consideraciones radica en la aparición del habla popular en boca de uno o
más personajes, en el primer caso (textos parcialmente monodialectales), o
en la presencia del dialecto como mimbre de la historia, en el segundo
(textos monodialectales).
(3) El sol quemaba, y al mediar el día

interrumpió Francisco la faena:
[…]
a la sombra candente de un olivo

se dispuso a comerse la merienda:
un pedazo de pan como caliza
y un trago de agua… si la hubiese cerca.
—¡Y entávia gruñi el amo!—meditaba—:
pus no sé yo qué más jacel se puea
que trabajal jasta que el cuerpo dici
que aunque quiera no pue jacel más fuerza.
¡Y gruñí! Y pa ganal los cuatro realis
es menestel queal jecho una breva,
y estrozalsi la ropa, y no traelsi
ni un cacho tajaína pa merienda
pa que el cuerpo no diga que no puedi
y se abarranqui con la carga a cuestas.
[…]
Y ante Francisco, en ademán airado,
gruñó el verdugo con la voz muy seca:
“No quiero jornaleros comodones
que a la sombra tan frescos se me sientan,
ni señoritos finos que se tardan
una hora en comerse la merienda”.
(“Los postres de la merienda”, Extremeñas)
De la lectura de este poema se pueden extraer varias conclusiones. La

primera, el empleo del español estándar en la voz del narrador y del señor,
y el de la variedad altoextremeña en la intervención del labrador. Estas
formas no son casuales, sino que el autor marca con ellas las distancias
entre una clase social y otra.
(4) —¿Y el médico?—preguntó Enrique.

—¿El médico? Pos cate usté que no le han echao nunca consumos. ¿Y sabe
usté por qué? Por miedo que le tienen. Un día el secretario le hizo
fanfarria, y tuvo que dir a Villamayor tendio en lo alto de un burro, too
descascarillao de tres mojicones. Otro día le rompió al vetirinario dos
costillas de un garrotazo. Pos le han cobrao miedo y nunca le echaron
reparto.
—¿Y la señorita Marinela?
—Ésa, entecutible, señorito Enrique.
—¿Cómo?
—Entecutible. Quiero decir que no está como endenantes. Dende que se
fué usté a Madrí, se ha dio quedando la cuitá como una cañareja.
(III, i, Los humildes senderos)
Los marcadores dialectales se aprecian, en la mayor parte de los casos,

en los diálogos. Al dotar a un personaje de un habla dialectal, el autor lo
88 Chapter Five
está poniendo de relieve, le está otorgando importancia dentro de un

contexto. Es imprescindible señalar asimismo que la escritura en cualquier
dialecto suele centrarse en representar el habla rústica o el habla de un
nivel social bajo—como se aprecia en los textos que hemos destacado más
arriba—, por lo que estará cargada de coloquialismos y vulgarismos, con
vacilación de vocales átonas o deformación de cultismos, entre otros
rasgos, pues en ellos prevalece el “artificio e invención” (Manuel Ariza
2008, 125). A su vez, el escritor busca que esa forma de hablar sea
inteligible para el lector, por lo que, unido a la voluntad artística que
subyace en cualquier texto literario, el dialecto será una recreación que se
aproxime de manera más o menos fidedigna a la realidad.
Se pretende asimismo otorgar mayor verosimilitud a la historia que se
cuenta, identificarse con una comunidad y reivindicarla (función
simbólica). La producción de José María Gabriel y Galán, considerado uno
de los valedores de este arquetipo dialectal en Extremadura, se erige en un
canto apegado a lo regional y a las circunstancias que envuelven al año
1898. Gabriel y Galán y Chamizo, por citar a dos de los autores más
representativos en este contexto, consiguen llegar hasta la entraña del
pueblo—verdadero protagonista de la historia—recuperando sus
costumbres, el vivir de sus gentes y su propia voz. En la lírica de Galán se
percibe una actitud clara de compromiso con la regeneración de un país
depauperado en el que se acentúan las desigualdades e injusticias sociales.
Ahora bien, es importante, por otra parte, referirse a la representación
gráfica del habla que se trata en este tipo de obras. Convendría preguntarse
si el autor cuenta con las herramientas suficientes y adecuadas para
plantearla. En estos casos es inevitable aludir al filtro, a la subjetividad del
autor. La mayor parte de los rasgos que se delinean como propios de las
hablas extremeñas inciden en el plano fónico y léxico. En cuanto a la
representación de las hablas en el nivel gramatical, no hay apenas
diferenciación con respecto a la lengua estándar. Así, es curioso cómo
ninguno de los autores de nuestro corpus redundan o unifican criterios en
torno a la aspiración de la /-s/ final e implosiva, un rasgo extendido en
toda la región:
(4) Semos probes, hija mía, porque icen

que son probes los que no tienen dinero:
semos probes, semos probes, ¡qué se yo!,
eso icen de nosotros, icen eso.
(“Compuerta”, El miajón de los castúos)
(5) Embargal, embargal los avíos,

que aquí no hay dinero:
lo he gastao en comías pa ella

y en boticas que no le sirvieron;
(“El embargo”, Extremeñas)
(6) —Usté ahí quieto, señorito…

—¿Como don Mariano?—preguntó bromista Medina.
—¡Ca uno es ca uno!—contestó Franco—. Verá usté: escomenzará el
perdigón a hacer jácaros hasta que responda el campo. Si hayle caza, como
la habrá, verá usté el Cosquilla qué piñoneo y cómo la recibe… Pos cuando
entre la pieza en plaza, dispara usté, la mata y no desmejora usté del su
agüelo, que no hacía casi nunca marro.
(VII, La sangre de la raza)
Tampoco hay unificación de criterios en la representación del yeísmo,

rasgo general pero no exclusivo de las hablas de Extremadura. En el
corpus que manejamos los ejemplos son escasos:
(7) viene el sol agateändo por los ceros

y s’ajuyen5 las neblinas y s’apagan
las estrellas y la luna y los luceros.
Con todo, podemos observar una serie de rasgos comunes en las obras
de estos escritores que se verán en los siguientes apartados.
3. El arquetipo de las hablas extremeñas en la literatura

3.1. Las soluciones fonéticas
Puesto que se pretende reflejar las hablas extremeñas sobre todo por el
oído, los autores suelen cuidar de manera especial la fonética. Los rasgos
de expresión de sus personajes o narraciones suelen reducirse a los más
característicos del español meridional, esto es, yeísmo, aspiración de la /h-
/ inicial o interior, relajación de consonantes interiores y aspiración de /-s/
implosiva. A ellos se unen rasgos coloquiales y vulgares que coinciden
con usos de distintas regiones de España como la supresión y adición de
sonidos, monoptongaciones, trueques vocálicos y consonánticos o
metátesis, entre otros. Los rasgos más recurrentes en el plano fonético se
resumen en los siguientes puntos.

5
Esta forma procede de aullar, según Manuel Ariza (2008, 128).
90 Chapter Five
3.1.1. Vocalismo
a) Vocales cerradas en final de palabra. Aparecen con bastante frecuencia

/-i, -u/ en posición final. Lo encontramos en José María Gabriel y Galán y
otros escritores del norte de la provincia cacereña, pero no en los de
Badajoz. Este es uno de los rasgos que relacionan a las hablas extremeñas
con el dialecto leonés.
(8) ¡Qué güeno es el Cristu6

de la ermita aquella!
Pa jacel más alegri mi vía,
ni dineros me dio ni jacienda,
polque ice la genti que sabi
que la dicha no está en la riqueza.
(“El cristu benditu”, Extremeñas)
b) En el vocalismo tónico aparecen las formas semos y mesmo, esta última

“relegada desde el siglo XVIII al habla rural” (Salvador Plans 1999, 260).
Como señala Zamora Vicente (1950: 80), “la variante e-i, y la aspiración y
sonorización de la s interior producen una gran diversidad de variantes
fonéticas”, siendo mesmo la forma más generalizada.
(9) enroscao lo mesmo que un perro

(“El desahuciado”, Extremeñas)
(10) tres manojos lo mesmo que tres jaces

(“El porqué de la cosa”, El miajón de los castúos)
(11) —Como saberlo, ya sabe que usté ha llegado, porque ayer mesmo le
mandé aviso…
(V, La sangre de la raza)
c) Inestabilidad de la vocal átona no final, rasgo también relacionado con

las hablas leonesas:
(12) Yo le ije, dispués de rezali

(13) y endispués los hijos, y endispués los nietos,

y endispués el pago de nuestra concencia

6
Las voces marcadas en cursiva en los textos de los apartados 3.1.1., 3.1.2. y 3.2.
son nuestras.
d) Esporádica aparición de palabras con yod en terminación, fenómeno

propio de las hablas leonesas. No es muy común y suele considerarse más
“un resto léxico” que fonético (Ariza 2008, 126).
(14) Cuatro vecis quiciás haiga dío

ancá’l cuarandero
(“El curandero”, Extremeñas).
e) Monoptongaciones en términos como pedras, jacindu (Gabriel y Galán)

o trunfaron (Luis Chamizo):
(15) como si el mocoso juesi un señoruco

de los de nacencia
(“Varón”, Extremeñas)
(16) los nietos de los machos que otros días

trunfaron en América.
(17) y estrujé mis ojos pa secame el llanto,

que a juerza de llanto m’entró la experencia
(“La experencia”, El miajón de los castúos)
f) Desarrollo de una a- protética:
(18) ¡Mia qué arrempujonis da con la carina!

(19) que los ojos arrebuscan en el suelo

(“Consejos del tío Perico”, El miajón de los castúos)
(20) y cuando se arrejuntan zúmbanles las cachiporras y hayle pelea

(La sangre de la raza)
3.1.2. Consonantismo
a) Conservación de /h-/ aspirada procedente de /F-/ latina. La solución

gráfica más extendida es la de j. Este es uno de los fenómenos más
recurrentes a la hora de reflejar las modalidades extremeñas, rasgo “muy
habitual y característico (no exclusivo) de la región, aunque hoy
considerado vulgar” (Salvador Plans 1999, 260).
92 Chapter Five
(21) la mujer y el chiquino, escaldaos

jechos unos negros
que me estoy ajogando7 de ansionis
(22) Cariños mu jondos son dambos cariños;

querencias mu jondas son dambas querencias
(“El noviajo”, El miajón de los castúos)
(23) —Al olivo y la encina el arao debajo y la jacha encima—sentenció.

(IX, La sangre de la raza)
b) Como se ha comentado más arriba, la aspiración de la /-s/ final e

implosiva no aparece recogida normalmente en estos autores.
(24) —Díjomelo mi agüela. Hay brujas en el palacio y nanos mu feos que

por la noche arrastran cadenas. Las brujas entran aluego en las casas por
las chimeneas. Too el que vido a las brujas hace después mal de ojo a los
rapaces.
(III, ix, Los humildes senderos)
Sí suelen recoger, en cambio, la aspiración de /-s/ final de grupo y la

transformación de la consonante subsiguiente:
(25) Hay que ver y cómo refalan los días

(“La experencia”, El miajón de los castúos)
c) En Luis Chamizo es frecuente la presencia de asimilaciones

consonánticas representadas ortográficamente como aspiración. Este rasgo
guardaría relación con el expuesto en el punto anterior. Por ejemplo:
llevagla, dejagla, jacegle.
(26) MARIQUILLA: […] es más fácil sentirlas que explicaglas

(I, i, Las brujas)
(27) ¡Dirme, dejagla sola,

dejagla yo a ella sola com’un perro”
(“La nacencia”, El miajón de los castúos)
d) El yeísmo es un rasgo ampliamente extendido por la región pero apenas

registrado por estos autores, como ya hemos señalado.

7
En esta voz encontramos la aspiración de /h-/ y la presencia de una a- protética
posterior que no impediría dicha aspiración.
e) Pérdida frecuente de la /-d-/ intervocálica. Por ejemplo: suor (y suol),

asomaos, queando, fiao, bandás.
(28) que esas mantas tienen

suol de su cuerpo
(“El embargo”, Extremeñas)
(29) A bocanás el aire nos traía

los ruíos d’allá lejos
(“La nacencia”, El miajón de los castúos).
(30) ¡Pero lo enreaora que es la gente, señorito!

(XVII, La sangre de la raza)
También se produce la pérdida de la d- inicial (esparraman, esconfiao,

esmoronan, icimos8, ije9) y de la -d final (usté, miusté).
f) Presencia de d- inicial en formas como dambos, dir (y dil).
g) Conservación del grupo latino /-MB-/ en voces como dambos o
relámbiate. Es también un resto del leonés.
h) Presencia de equivalencias acústicas en voces como Celipe, gorver,
agüela, güeno.
(31) —Asegura, pero los novios tóo se lo merecen.

—¡El sí que es güeno!
—¿Pos y ella?
(XXXV, La sangre de la raza)
(32) Unos güenos mozos, cantando flamenco,

jacen gorgoritos en una taberna.
i) Metátesis en términos como adrento o palrar.
(33) suerbe p’adrento remetiendo juncia

(“El Chiriveje”, El miajón de los castúos)
(34) Me voy por el falsete d’allá drento

(II, v, Las brujas)

8
De la forma “decimos”.
9
De la forma “dije”.
94 Chapter Five
j) Trueque de líquidas. El cambio de l en r, y viceversa, tras oclusiva labial

o velar, es común en el Occidente y Sur peninsular. En posición final de
sílaba, la lateral tiende a convertirse en vibrante, en el sur de Extremadura,
Andalucía y Murcia. En cambio, la pronunciación de lateral en lugar de
vibrante se recoge en el norte de Extremadura. Así, la primera solución la
encontramos en Chamizo pero no en Gabriel y Galán, y la segunda en este
y no en los escritores pacenses.
(35) Miusté a vel, por favol, señol médico

(36) Ni mienta del pueblo, ni jaci otro oficio

que dil a una escuela
y palral de bobás que allí aprendí,
que pan a le sirvin cuantis que se venga.
(37) más limpia que la cara de la Virgen,

más branca que la fló de los jarales,
(38) Asín son las juergas, madre,

de los señores der pueblo
(“Desconcierto”, El miajón de los castúos)
3.2. Aspectos morfosintácticos
a) En el nivel de la morfosintaxis, los aspectos que deben subrayarse no

son tan numerosos ni exclusivos de la región. Se puede destacar el empleo
del sufijo -ino como elemento puramente dialectal.
(39) y en los dientis se da con boticas

de unos cacharrinos que tieni en la mesa
(40) La jacienda, tuita perdía;

los pagos, cayendo;
la mujer y el chiquino, escaldaos,
jechos unos negros
(41) no me jagas pucherinos

cuando yo te jaga fiestas
(“El chiriveje”, El miajón de los castúos)
b) Otro rasgo de las hablas extremeñas es el empleo del verbo quedar por
“dejar”.
(42) A vecis su madri

en cuerinos del to me lo quea,
se poni un pañali tendío en las sayas
y allí me lo jecha
c) Es también frecuente, aunque no exclusivo del extremeño, el empleo del

posesivo antepuesto precedido de artículo:
(43) pero ejaba perdía a la mi genti

si en el ajo me cogin y me enrean
(“Los postres de la merienda”, Extremeñas)
(44) ¡Venga el mi mocino,

venga la mi prenda!
(45) Yo di matracazos
con la mi matraca
(“Semana Santa en Guareña”, El miajón de los castúos)
4) El resto pueden considerarse vulgarismos extendidos por otras regiones

españolas, como el empleo de mus por “nos”, presente también en Pereda,
por ejemplo:
(46) nusotras los vemos, mus encaprichamos

y mercamos uno, a tontas y a ciegas,
sin que mus endilguen los revendeores de los chismecitos
qu’enganchan la cuerda
(“La experencia", El miajón de los castúos)
5) Otros vulgarismos son las formas pa “para” y mu “muy”, extendidas

por todas las regiones.
(47) ¡Estoy ya mu jarto!

(48) Cariños mu jondos son dambos cariños;

querencias mu jondas son dambas querencias
96 Chapter Five
6) También vulgares son la preposición dende “desde” y los adverbios

tamién, asín y asina. Estos rasgos suelen ser una seña de identidad de los
escritores que escriben en dialecto:
(49) Mal jarás si asín lo jacis,

que no te ofendo aunque venga
sin maldálmelo a traelti
lo que a ti te pertenezca
(“La embajadora”, Extremeñas)
(50) cuando Dios, dende los cielos

pa probá si eran mu jondas sus querencias,
malograra sus esfuerzos
(“Consejos del tío Perico”, El miajón de los castúos)
(51) Y sus dirá tamién cómo palramos

los hijos d’estas tierras,
porqu’icimos asina: jierro, jumo
y la jacha y el jigo y la jiguera
(52) Que ande rondando a esa mujer, por si cae esa breva, no está
descaminao, porque a nadie le amarga un dulce; pero de eso a que le haga
caso esa señorita hayle más que dende aquí a Badajoz…
(XVII, La sangre de la raza)
(53) —¡Pon la telera más somía—gritó Frasco—y no las jostigues! ¡Asina!

¿Ves cómo pa tóo hayle que tener maña?
(III, La sangre de la raza)
4. Reflexiones finales
El valor filológico de la producción de los escritores que han centrado
este análisis no debe partir únicamente de los textos escritos en variedad
extremeña, sino del conjunto de su producción. Dados los propósitos de
este trabajo, nos hemos centrado de manera exclusiva en las obras de que
reproducen, en mayor o menor medida, las hablas extremeñas. Esta labor
convierte la lengua en material literario a raíz de lo que se conoce, recoge
y escoge.
Gabriel y Galán, Chamizo y Reyes Huertas coinciden en otorgar a la
fonética un papel destacado a la hora de caracterizar las hablas extremeñas
frente a otras variedades cercanas con las que comparten numerosos rasgos
(el leonés y las hablas meridionales). Como hemos indicado a lo largo del
capítulo, estos escritores no son lingüistas, por lo que sus manifestaciones

no pueden concebirse como muestras del extremeño en sentido estricto,
pero sí como un indicador del estado de la lengua hacia finales del XIX y
principios del XX. Cada escritor refleja la variedad de su entorno y en su
contemporaneidad. Estas manifestaciones literarias ayudan a trazar, sin
duda, la realidad lingüística de Extremadura con cierta rigurosidad y
verosimilitud, atendiendo a sus múltiples variantes, tanto diatópicas como
diastráticas.
Referencias bibliográficas
Alvar, M. “Los dialectalismos en la poesía española del siglo XX.” En
Estudios y ensayos de literatura española contemporánea, editado por
M. Alvar. Madrid: Gredos, 1971 [online]. Acceso 15 de febrero, 2016.
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/los-dialectalismos-en-la-poesa-
espaola-del-siglo-xx-0/.
Ariza Viguera, M. Estudios sobre el extremeño. Cáceres: Servicio de
Publicaciones de la Universidad de Extremadura, 2008.
Brook, G. L. English Dialects. Londres: Andre Deutsch, 1978.
Chamizo, L. El miajón de los castúos (rapsodias extremeñas). Madrid:
Alejandro Pueyo, 1921.
—. El miajón de los castúos: rapsodias extremeñas. Madrid: Espasa
Calpe, 1981.
—. Las brujas: poema dramático de ambiente extremeño, en tres cantos y
en verso. Badajoz: Tip. y Libr. de Arqueros, 1932.
Fernández, J. A. “Deformaciones populacheras en el diálogo galdosiano.”
Anales galdosianos (1978): 112-116. Acceso 10 de febrero, 2016.
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/deformaciones-populacheras-en-
el-dilogo-galdosiano-0/.
Gabriel y Galán, J. M.ª Extremeñas. Edición de G. Hidalgo Bayal.
Badajoz: Diputación Provincial, 1991.
—. Extremeñas. Religiosas. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, 1994.
Hurtado Albir, A. Traducción y traductología. Introducción a la
traductología. Madrid: Cátedra, 2001.
Mair, C. “A methodological framework for research on the use of
nonstandard language in fiction.” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und
Amerikanistik 17/1 (1992): 103-123.
Pereda, J. M.ª de. Peñas arriba. Edición de A. Rey. Madrid: Cátedra, 1988
[1895].
Pérez Galdós, B. Fortunata y Jacinta: dos historias de casadas. Edición
de F. Caudet. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997.
98 Chapter Five
—. Obras Completas, V. Edición de A. H. Clarke, 61-62. Santander:

Ediciones Tantín, 1992.
Rabadán, R. Equivalencia y traducción. Problemática de la equivalencia
translémica inglés-español. León: Universidad de León, 1991.
Rebollo Torío, M. Á. “Ortografía y grafías en los escritores extremeños.”
En Actas del VIII Congreso de Estudios Extremeños, coordinado por F.
Hermoso Ruiz, 2046-2058. Badajoz: Junta de Extremadura, 2007.
Reyes Huertas, A. Los humildes senderos. Madrid: Sucesores de
Hernando, 1920.
—. La sangre de la raza. Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de A.
Marzo, 1922.
—. La sangre de la raza. Edición de M. S. Viola. Badajoz: Diputación,
1995.
—. Los humildes senderos. Edición de M. Pecellín Lancharro. Sevilla:
Renacimiento, 2005.
Salvador Plans. A. “Dialectología y folclore en Extremadura en el tránsito
del siglo XIX al XX.” Revista de Estudios Extremeños LIV/3 (1998):
807-831.
—. “Lengua, casticismo e intrahistoria en Luis Chamizo.” Analecta
Malacitana, anejo XXIV (1999): 255-268.
—. “El habla popular en los escritores finiseculares.” En Gabriel y Galán,
época y obra, coordinado por A. Salvador y Á. Valverde, 249-279.
Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2006.
Sánchez Lobato, J. “Modelos de uso de lengua en la literatura actual: la
lengua desde la enseñanza.” En V Congreso Internacional de la
ASELE. Tendencias Actuales en la Enseñanza del Español como
Lengua Extranjera I. Santander, 1994, editado por S. Montesa Peydró
y P. Gomis Blanco. Málaga: Centro Virtual Cervantes, 1996 [online].
Acceso 15 de febrero, 2016.
http://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca_ele/asele/asele_v.htm.
Unamuno, M. de. “Alma vasca.” Alma Española, 10 de enero, 1904.
Acceso 12 de febrero, 2016.
http://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/details.vm?q=id:0003636242&lang=es.
—. “Sintaxis mecánica.” Nuevo Mundo, 1 de julio, 1921. Acceso 12 de
febrero, 2016.
http://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/details.vm?q=id:0012069988&lang=es.
Zamora Vicente, A. “El dialectalismo de José María Gabriel y Galán.”
Filología II (1950): 113-175.

CHAPTER SIX
DOS GACELAS BAJO UN MISMO ÁRBOL.

VARIACIONES ESTILÍSTICAS DE ARRAIGO
Y DESARRAIGO EN LA OBRA POÉTICA
DE DÁMASO ALONSO
ANTONIO RIVERO MACHINA
Introducción
Podríamos señalar para empezar, sin rigor entomológico alguno, cuatro
tipos de poetas: los apenas poetas, los críticos-poetas, los poetas-críticos y
los poetas de veras. Son los primeros poetas a duras penas, de lo que se
colige que no merecen mayor comentario. Por su parte, las categorías
segunda y tercera son la prueba fehaciente de que no siempre el orden de
los factores de una suma no altera el producto, dado que no es lo mismo el
crítico metido a poeta que el poeta metido a crítico. La cuarta categoría es,
como en la gradación tomística, la más deseable: aquella en la que no se
sabe dónde empieza el crítico y acaba el poeta, porque es en este último
donde las teorías del otro alcanzan su realización plena, de suerte que al
final se precisa del crítico para entender al poeta y al poeta para entender
al crítico. Tal parece el caso, y aquí nos investimos al fin del rigor exigido,
de un poeta de veras como Dámaso Alonso. Pocos ejemplos como el
suyo—él, que en su definitiva acuñación de una “Generación de 1927” se
desmarcaba con modestia retórica como el crítico metido a poeta del
grupo—encarnan la íntima trabazón entre la teoría y la praxis concurrentes
en la construcción de una poética propia.
En este sentido, todavía nos llega a sorprender la enorme influencia
que Dámaso Alonso ha logrado tener en nuestra manera de entender la
poesía española del siglo XX en los momentos actuales. A él se debe,
prácticamente, la nómina canónica y la formulación definitiva de nuestro
100 Chapter Six
Veintisiete y, con él, de nuestro ámbito literario anterior a la guerra civil1.

Asimismo, es sobre una de sus construcciones críticas, la dicotomía entre
una poesía “arraigada” y otra “desarraigada”, como buena parte de la
crítica actual explica el panorama poético inmediatamente posterior a
dicha contienda. Bien es cierto, cabe apuntarlo brevemente, que los
matices y réplicas a aquella definición canónica del Veintisiete se han
sucedido en abundancia desde su misma formulación en 1948, empezando
por el propio Luis Cernuda2, hasta nuestros días. Con menor frecuencia,
sin embargo, se ha subrayado la derivación y torcedura que de aquellos
marbetes acuñados por Alonso por aquellos mismos años, los marbetes de
“arraigo” y “desarraigo”, ha hecho un amplio sector de la crítica posterior.
De su correcta comprensión, en cambio, derivará una mejor lectura no solo
del que fue su mejor libro de poemas, ese que le confirmó como algo más
que un crítico metido a poeta, su celebérrimo Hijos de la ira (Madrid,
Revista de Occidente 1944), sino también de un poemario que no solo se
encuentra hermanado con este, el libro de prodigiosa métrica titulado
Oscura noticia (Madrid, Adonáis 1944), sino que además, en cierto
sentido, lo complementa y lo completa.
Ese mismo año de 1944, Alonso ya había reunido en Ensayos sobre
poesía española (Madrid, Revista de Occidente) una serie de artículos
críticos que, con enorme influencia, habían ido apareciendo desde la
década de los años treinta en cabeceras como Cruz y Raya o la propia
Revista de Occidente. Se reunieron allí sus más célebres trabajos sobre
Góngora y otros poetas clásicos como Quevedo, fray Luis, Luis Carrillo o
el poema de Mío Cid. También reunía aquel volumen, a su vez, diversos
trabajos sobre poetas “contemporáneos”, el primero de los cuales sería
Bécquer y entre los que aparecían estudios sobre “Federico García Lorca y
la expresión de lo español” (Alonso 1944, 341-350), extensos estudios
sobre la poesía de Vicente Aleixandre, Gerardo Diego o dos textos de
rabiosa actualidad como un “Elogio del endecasílabo” dedicado a José
García Nieto (Alonso 1944, 145-150) y una breve conferencia sobre la
“Permanencia del soneto” al hilo del primer libro poético de Vicente Gaos
(Alonso 1944, 395-401).
Seis años después, con todo, ampliará y revisará aquel compendio de
su obra crítica hasta el punto de separar en dos obras distintas aquella
selecta antología de sus trabajos filológicos, reservando un volumen para
los poetas clásicos y otro para los “contemporáneos”. Salían así, en un año

1
Dámaso Alonso, “Una generación poética (1920-1936)”, Finisterre, Madrid, n.º
35 (marzo de 1948).
2
Luis Cernuda, “Carta abierta a Dámaso Alonso”, Madrid, Ínsula, n.º 35
(noviembre de 1948).
Dos gacelas bajo un mismo árbol 101
tan emblemático como el ecuador del siglo, lo que habría de ser su

magnum opus como crítico literario. Su título, Poesía española. Ensayo de
métodos y límites estilísticos (Madrid, Gredos 1950), englobaba bajo su
égida extensos y sesudos trabajos sobre Garcilaso de la Vega, fray Luis de
León, san Juan de la Cruz, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega y Francisco de
Quevedo. Muchos de ellos ya habían aparecido en el tomo de 1944, si bien
destacaban ahora incorporaciones tan elocuentes como la de Garcilaso.
Dos años más tarde, a su vez, reunía en Poetas españoles contemporáneos
(Madrid, Gredos 1952) sus principales ensayos sobre una lírica
contemporánea que para él arranca con Bécquer y desemboca en aquel
presente en el que el propio Dámaso lanzaba, como hemos visto, su
formulación de una “Generación de 1927” (Alonso 1965, 155-178) al
tiempo que comentaba la trayectoria poética o advertía de las incipientes
bondades de jóvenes poetas como el citado Vicente Gaos, Luis Rosales,
Blas de Otero o Leopoldo Panero.
Aquellos dos volúmenes hermanos, Poesía española. Ensayo de
métodos y límites estilísticos (Madrid, Gredos 1950) y Poetas españoles
contemporáneos (Madrid, Gredos 1952)—como hermanos eran Hijos de
la ira y Oscura noticia—, se repartían así los estudios críticos de un filólogo
total que prodigaba su atención por todo el espectro histórico de nuestras
letras, con Bécquer como parteaguas de lo clásico y lo contemporáneo.
Conviene por ello, en este punto, subrayar intencionadamente el título del
volumen reservado a los primeros. Agavillados en torno al “método
estilístico”, aquellos poetas clásicos que habían sido “redescubiertos”
desde el Noventayocho con visibles consecuencias para aquel mediar del
siglo se veían leídos por Alonso con coherencia metodológica. Todos
ellos, no por casualidad, habían pasado recientemente por la moda, tan en
boga, de los centenarios. No solo el trascendental centenario gongorino—
trascendental por la posterior construcción crítica de Alonso,
precisamente—, sino por la sucesión de homenajes a las figuras de fray
Luis—nacido en 1527—, Lope—muerto en 1635—, Garcilaso—muerto
en 1536—, san Juan de la Cruz—nacido en 1542—o Quevedo—muerto en
1645—.
No en vano, la elección del “método estilístico” pretendía algo más que
ofrecer un análisis personal a tono con esa poesía clásica nuestra que tanto
había sido invocada en aras de la “rehumanización” de la lírica a lo largo
de los años treinta y cuarenta del siglo XX. Lo que Dámaso Alonso
buscaba conseguir con su Poesía española de 1950 era lo mismo a lo que
aspiró Miguel de Cervantes en 1613 con sus Novelas ejemplares. Esto es:
ofrecer, al mismo tiempo que un contenido jugoso en el que ponían lo
mejor de sí como ensayista y novelista—respectivamente—, una muestra
102 Chapter Six
“ejemplar” de saber hacer en el oficio. No en vano, con aquellos

trabajos—reeditados abundantemente desde entonces—Dámaso Alonso
hacía entrar en España, por la puerta grande y para el gran público, la
llamada “crítica estilística”3. Desde que el suizo Charles Bally enunciara,
en un ámbito estrictamente lingüístico, sus Précis de stylistique en 1905, la
“estilística” había ido ganando terreno como el principal método de lectura
inmanente entre la crítica de la Europa continental. Fueron así los
romanistas germánicos Karl Vossler, Helmut Hatzfeld y Leo Spitzer,
fundamentalmente, quienes en el periodo de entreguerras aplicaron de
manera sistemática el enfoque de la Stilkritik a los estudios literarios4. El
propio Dámaso contactó con aquel ambiente en primera persona tras un
primer viaje como lector extranjero en el Berlín de 1922. Algo después lo
haría como profesor visitante en Leipzig, en el año de 1934. Supo Dámaso
Alonso, sin embargo, amalgamar los hallazgos de la estilística germana
con otras propuestas bien conocidas por el profesor madrileño como las
del lexicógrafo y romanista suizo Walther von Wartburg o las del propio
Ferdinand de Saussure, sin olvidar el magisterio del incombustible y
siempre bien informado Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Una labor de
“importación” del método estilístico que tuvo en el ámbito
hispanohablante otro gran activo: el filólogo navarro Amado Alonso,
vecino de Buenos Aires, a la sazón, desde 1927. Aquella importación
pronto se tradujo, a su vez, en toda una “escuela estilística española”,
escuela que encontró en Rafael Lapesa y Carlos Bousoño dos de sus
mejores cultivadores, al tiempo que en el poeta y crítico cubano Roberto
Fernández Retamar y su Idea de la estilística. Sobre la escuela lingüística
española (La Habana, Universidad Central de las Villas 1958) su mejor
síntesis5.
En todo caso, el hermanamiento entre la escuela estilística alemana y la
española, ambas tildadas de “idealistas”, es evidente. Les une el mismo
punto de partida lingüístico-formal como método para desentrañar la
desviación personal de cada autor—un concepto particularmente
desarrollado por Spitzer—en busca de un veredicto inequívoco sobre lo

3
En aquella misma colección, la “Biblioteca Románica Hispánica” dirigida a la
sazón por el propio Dámaso, se publicaron monografías de Leo Spitzer, Helmunt
Hatzfeld, Amado Alonso o Carlos Bousoño, entre otras referencias del idealismo
estilístico.
4
Para una buena síntesis de su historia y sus propuestas hermenéuticas, véase el
volumen de José María Paz Gago, La estilística (Madrid, Síntesis 1993).
5
Tan emblemático ensayo ha sido recientemente reeditado en un facsímil al
cuidado de Luis Íñigo-Madrigal en Roberto Fernández Retamar, Idea de la
estilística. Sobre la escuela lingüística española (Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva 2003).
que sería el “estilo personal” del poeta en cuestión. Dicho de otro modo: el
crítico procura mediante un análisis lingüístico pormenorizado de los
elementos formales del texto—por ello, preferentemente poético—
reconocer no solo los usos y recursos estilísticos del autor, sino su misma
sicología, las propias e íntimas intenciones del creador y su texto. Una
imbricación entre fondo y forma que se juzga no solo deseable y crucial,
sino algo mucho más absoluto: infalible. Una certeza hermenéutica que les
llevó en ocasiones a una excesiva confianza en la “intuición” personal del
crítico, al margen de recepciones críticas intermedias6.
No en vano, el autor de Hijos de la ira ya había aplicado en La lengua
poética de Góngora (Madrid, Revista de Filología Española, 1935) su fe
en una intuición natural del lector capaz más allá de cientificismos—lo
que podríamos tildar con toda intención como una “intuición
neorromántica”7—así como en la infalible imbricación entre “significante
y significado”. Una relación que, a diferencia de lo expuesto por Saussure
para su definición del signo lingüístico, no puede ser considerada como
totalmente “arbitraria”:
Al reducir Saussure el contenido del signo al concepto, desconoce

totalmente la esencia del lenguaje: el lenguaje es un inmenso complejo en
el que se refleja la complejidad psíquica del hombre. El hombre al hablar
no se conduce como una fría y desamorada máquina pensante. Todas las
vetas de su vida espiritual—intrincada como una selva virgen—buscan
expresión (Alonso, 1971: 25-26).
Una asociación que será, en el caso del quehacer poético, no solo

natural sino consciente y motivada: “para nosotros, en poesía, hay siempre
una vinculación motivada entre significante y significado” (Alonso, 1971:
31-32). Es desde esta clave idealista y formal, entendida “por ‘forma
exterior’ la relación entre significante y significado, en la perspectiva
desde el primero hacia lo segundo” (Alonso 1971, 32), desde la que el

6
“El primer conocimiento de la obra poética es, pues, del lector, y consiste en una
intuición totalizadora, que, iluminada por la lectura, viene como a reproducir la
intuición totalizadora que dio origen a la obra misma, es decir, la de su autor. Este
conocimiento intuitivo que adquiere el lector de una obra literaria es inmediato, y
tanto más puro cuanto menos elementos extraños se hayan interpuesto entre ambas
intuiciones” (Alonso 1971, 38).
7
En el prólogo a su Poesía española de 1950 dirá que “la selección de ‘método’
para el estudio estilístico no se puede hacer por normas de un criterio racional (…)
la única manera de entrar al recinto es un afortunado salto, una intuición. Toda
intuición es querenciosa, es acto de amor, o que supone el amor” (Alonso 1971,
11).
104 Chapter Six
ensayista madrileño interpreta nuestra mejor poesía áurea. Para hacernos

una idea, bastará con citar alguno de los epígrafes del volumen al hilo de
Garcilaso, san Juan de la Cruz o Góngora. Así sucede con enunciados
como “¿Por qué Garcilaso usa aquí hipérbaton?”, “Expresión de serena
majestad: ritmo yámbico”, “Función estética del adjetivo”, “¿Una quiebra
de la sintaxis gongorina?” o “Proliferación de elementos metafóricos de
segundo grado”.
Desarrollado así en la teoría y en la práctica, su oficio en el método
estilístico hasta sus mismos “límites”, el autor de Oscura noticia lo
aplicará tan solo dos años más tarde, y en la misma “Biblioteca Románica
Hispánica” de Gredos, a los poetas de su propio tiempo y generación8.
Reunía así Dámaso en Poetas españoles contemporáneos (Madrid, Gredos
1952) trabajos publicados o inéditos sobre los Machado, Alberti, Salinas,
Guillén, Diego, Aleixandre, Panero, Conde o Rosales, entre otros. Y si en
1950 Poesía española se abría con el gran emblema de la “rehumanización”
de los años treinta—esto es, Garcilaso de la Vega—, Poetas españoles
contemporáneos hacía lo propio en 1952 con el otro pilar de aquel impulso
neorromántico anterior y posterior a la guerra civil: Gustavo Adolfo
Bécquer, el otro centenario del malogrado año de 19369. Es en este
volumen, el mismo en el que como ya se ha dicho fijará la nómina
canónica del Veintisiete en su vinculación con el centenario gongorino,
donde Dámaso expone su dicotomía, tan repetida—y manipulada—desde
entonces, entre la poesía “arraigada” y “desarraigada” de nuestra
posguerra. Conviene, por lo tanto, fijar el instante y el contexto en que
dichos marbetes vieron la luz.
Fue en la reseña al celebrado poemario de Leopoldo Panero Escrito a
cada instante (Madrid, Ediciones Cultura Hispánica 1949), con el que el
poeta astorgano logró el Premio Nacional de Poesía de aquel año, donde
Dámaso Alonso adelantó la hoy tan conocida etiqueta. Exponía así bajo el
escueto título de “Poesía arraigada”, en el noveno número de Cuadernos
Hispanoamericanos, en mayo de 1949, su lectura de un poemario que
emparentaba con Unamuno y Antonio Machado (Alonso 1949, 692). Una
palabra, “arraigada”, que aparece al mismo tiempo, y no por casualidad, en
ese mismo número de Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, de nuevo vinculada
a “un Antonio Machado, un primer Juan Ramón” en la reseña que Luis

8
“Yo entiendo—pero el poeta probablemente no lo ha pensado así—–
‘generación’ en el sentido más amplio: todos los vivientes, porque esta losa pesa lo
mismo sobre jóvenes que viejos” (Alonso 1965, 351).
9
El capítulo, uno de los más extensos, se titula “Originalidad de Bécquer” (Alonso
1965, 13-47) y ya había sido recogido en Ensayos sobre literatura española en
1944.
Felipe Vivanco realiza de otro libro crucial de aquel año y aquel grupo: La
casa encendida de Luis Rosales (Vivanco 1949, 725). Dirige Dámaso su
análisis, por su parte, hacia la raíz existencial y local—a un tiempo—de
aquellos versos de Panero mediante una serie de fragmentos seleccionados.
De hecho, al caserón familiar de los Panero en Astorga, Castrillo de las
Piedras, nos remiten los versos del poema “El peso del mundo” de Escrito
a cada instante de donde Dámaso toma el célebre vocablo:
(1) Vivir hoy siempre, y estar

arraigado aquí y ahora
como Castrillo y Nistal...
Así, tres años después Dámaso incluiría aquella crucial reseña en

Poetas españoles contemporáneos bajo el título de “La poesía arraigada de
Leopoldo Panero” (Alonso 1965, 315-337), al tiempo que le añadía—
pensando ahora en su adaptación para dicho volumen—lo que será el
desarrollo de aquel concepto, apenas sugerido, de “poesía arraigada”
(Alonso 1965, 345-358). Y no solo, sino que se definirá, por contraste, una
corriente complementaria y refleja: la “poesía desarraigada”. Planteada
pues, en aquel 1952, la célebre dicotomía entre poesía arraigada y poesía
desarraigada, conviene aclarar ya, como punto de partida señalado por el
propio Dámaso, la raíz puramente estilística—siempre presente como
método en sus reflexiones—de dichas categorías:
En este libro se ha hablado alguna vez de poesía “arraigada”. Nos conviene

ampliar ahora ese concepto. El panorama poético español actual nos ofrece
unas cuantas imágenes del mundo, muy armónicas o bien centradas, o
vinculadas a un ancla, a un fijo amarre: todo lo llamaré poesía arraigada.
Es bien curioso que en nuestros tristísimos años hayan venido a coincidir,
en España, unas cuantas voces poéticas todas con fe en algo, con una
alegría, ya jubilosa, ya melancólica, con una luminosa y reglada creencia
en la organización de la realidad contingente. Digo “hayan venido a
coincidir”, porque esas voces no pueden ser más distintas (Alonso 1965,
345).
Dichas voces “arraigadas”, que “venían a coincidir” sin imperativo

político o programático alguno, sino que lo hacían por convergencia y
desde los propios mecanismos estilísticos—personales—del quehacer
poético serían, según Dámaso, las voces “distintas” de Jorge Guillén—el
júbilo ante lo creado—, Leopoldo Panero y José Antonio Muñoz Rojas—
ambos en el canto al terruño familiar—y José María Valverde—la fe
entregada en Dios—. Cuatro poetas de tres promociones, por edad de
nacimiento, sucesivas. Y, con ellos, tres ejes temáticos que alguno podría
106 Chapter Six
intentar relacionar con los tres pilares de aquel “primer franquismo” de la

posguerra: el vitalismo falangista, el localismo tradicionalista y la
religiosidad del nacional-catolicismo sucesivamente; si no fuera, claro
está, porque las biografías políticas de Guillén y Valverde, pero también
de Muñoz Rojas y Panero, se prestan difícilmente a tales torceduras. Los
juicios de Dámaso quedaban pues muy lejos de la lectura moral, o mejor
dicho política—esto es: una poesía arraigada afecta al régimen franquista
frente a una poesía desarraigada como oposición al mismo—, que
posteriormente, en su recepción histórica, se le ha adherido.
Exactamente lo mismo sucede con su proposición del “desarraigo”. En
este sentido, el siempre hábil Dámaso—recordemos su estrategia para
incluirse en una nómina oficial del Veintisiete—, se apunta entre los
poetas que encarnarían una actitud de desarraigo y desaliento existencial
ante las ruinas físicas y morales surgidas de la segunda guerra mundial:
Para otros, el mundo nos es un caos y una angustia, y la poesía una

frenética búsqueda de ordenación y de ancla. Sí, otros estamos muy lejos
de toda armonía y toda serenidad. Hemos vuelto los ojos en torno, y nos
hemos sentido como una monstruosa, una indescifrable apariencia,
rodeada, sitiada por otras apariencias, tan incomprensibles, tan feroces,
quizá tan desgraciadas como nosotros mismos (Alonso 1965, 349).
No obstante, conviene mantenerse alerta ante el fino Dámaso en este

punto, pues no parece sino referirse a sus versos de Hijos de la ira como
paradigma de un desarraigo que como el mismo comprobó podía
canalizarse desde otros recursos “estilísticos”. En todo caso, y una vez
incluido el propio Dámaso, apenas se sugieren para el “desarraigo” dos
nombres más: el donostiarra Juan de Lacea y el bilbaíno Blas de Otero10.
Realmente, es en el análisis de este último en lo que se centra Alonso en lo
que resta de aquel célebre capítulo. Un análisis que, como venimos
subrayando, será de nuevo puramente estilístico y en el que los polos
opuestos de “arraigo y desarraigo” se presentan en realidad como caras de
una misma moneda: la obsesión por constatar la presencia de Dios,
cumplida en los primeros y frustrada en los segundos. Que es
estrictamente estilístico, y algo tramposo, el método damasiano lo

10
“Algún día quisiera estudiar la obra de varios de esos poetas, y señalar
coincidencias, los distintos valores y enormes diferencias. La lista sería bastante
norteña” (Alonso 1965, 349). ¿Apuntaría, con lo de norteña, además de a los
vascos De Lacea y De Otero a los también vascos Ángela Figuera y Gabriel
Celaya, a los santanderinos José Luis Hidalgo y José Hierro o al burgalés
Victoriano Crémer, entre otros?
evidencia una nota al pie del comentario de un soneto del “arraigado”

Muñoz Rojas cuyo uso “gozoso” del encabalgamiento se opone al empleo
abrupto de este mismo recurso formal en Blas de Otero:
El paralelismo de los versos primero y tercero se repite luego, fluido, en el

de los séptimo y octavo. Nótese cómo los fenómenos de significante sólo
operan a través del significado (teoría bien clara en mi Poesía española,
Ensayo de métodos y límites estilísticos, pero que alguno se ha entestarado
en no querer comprender): aquí los encabalgamientos ásperos no sirven
más que como imagen de la incontenible exuberancia, y sobre todo, punto
de referencia para la fluidez de los versos que vienen luego. Entiéndase las
relaciones entre significante y significado en lo que toca a encabalgamiento
por comparación con la técnica de Blas de Otero, poeta del que hablamos
enseguida (Alonso 1965, 347).
Nace la tan repetida dicotomía damasiana, por lo tanto, enclavada en el

año de 1952, momento de incuestionable consolidación franquista en el
interior y de plena hegemonía formalista entre la crítica más avanzada.
Una hegemonía que tuvo en el ámbito continental europeo su
materialización más clara en la estilística hispano-germana frente al New
Criticism del ámbito anglosajón, en el que por esos años trabajaban
Salinas, Guillén o Cernuda en los Estados Unidos. La dicotomía expuesta,
por otra parte, no fue otra que la que él mismo había cultivado al publicar
en un mismo año Oscura noticia (Madrid, Adonáis 1944) y el quizás más
trascendente Hijos de la ira (Madrid, Revista de Occidente 1944); una
dicotomía que era, por supuesto, moral—no política—pero que era, ante
todo, formal: el calibrado soneto de Oscura noticia frente al desasosegante
polimorfismo de Hijos de la ira. La indisoluble alianza entre “significante
y significado”, que diría Dámaso.
Es importante, por ello, tener muy presente esta idea: el arraigo y el
desarraigo no serían sino dos realizaciones estilísticas—dos estados de
ánimo lingüístico, podríamos decir—de las mismas obsesiones: el temor
existencial resuelto como un “querer creer” y un “no poder creer”; la
mirada a lo cotidiano como respuesta reconfortante y desasosegante; la
síntesis de todo ello—en suma—como un misterio, como una “oscura
noticia”, que quizás la poesía ayude a desencriptar. Con esto bien
presente—y con el método estilístico siempre al fondo—la publicación
simultánea en el convulso año de 1944 de Hijos de la ira y de Oscura
noticia revela unas coordenadas de lectura francamente interesantes.
Trazada así la ruta de lectura, según la cual leeremos Oscura noticia
como paradigma de “arraigo” al tiempo que Hijos de la ira lo será del
“desarraigo”, y todo ello poniendo en práctica, siquiera mínimamente, las
108 Chapter Six
enseñanzas estilísticas del propio Dámaso, comenzaremos por el primero

de estos poemarios, bastante menos frecuentado por la crítica que el
segundo. Compone Oscura noticia (Madrid, Adonáis 1944) un repertorio
variado de piezas líricas, incluyendo una suerte de antología poética de
textos editados o inéditos que se remontan hasta 1919. No obstante, el
volumen se encuentra encabezado por la sección que da nombre a todo el
conjunto, “Oscura noticia”, y que el propio poeta fecha entre 1933 y 1943.
Años después, con todo, el autor de Hombre y Dios anotará que aquellos
poemas fueron trabajados, fundamentalmente, entre 1940 y 1943 (Alonso
1969, 199). Esto es, en plena posguerra española y segunda guerra
mundial. El mismo tiempo en que da forma a sus Hijos de la ira.
Centrándonos pues en los dieciséis poemas que conforman
propiamente el conjunto central de Oscura noticia, asistimos a todo un
catálogo métrico de la mejor tradición española, de la que el solvente
filólogo demuestra un profundo conocimiento. El hecho de encontrarme
inmerso por aquellos meses en la redacción de sus trabajos críticos sobre
san Juan de la Cruz—a la sazón de centenario en 1942—influyó en ello no
poco. En el recuentro estrófico de “Oscura noticia” contamos así ocho
sonetos—Garcilaso omnipresente—, un romance castellano, la estrofa
sáfica del “Sueño de las dos ciervas” y su continuación, la magistral silva
de “A los que van a nacer”—en la que, junto a la alternancia de
heptasílabos y endecasílabos de rigor asistimos a la alternancia de estrofas
de, precisamente, siete u once versos—, la también silva de “Más aún”, el
endecasílabo blanco de “La muerte” y una copla final. En el primer y
penúltimo poema del conjunto, el celebrado “Sueño de las dos ciervas”,
Dámaso Alonso subraya ya la profunda comunión—estilística—entre el
fondo y la forma. No en vano, la decisión de dividir en dos el poema,
“abrazando” el conjunto –serán el primer y penúltimo texto de la sección–
marca a las claras la importancia de este texto en el mensaje global de
Oscura noticia. La alegoría expuesta, abundantemente comentada por la
crítica y el propio autor11, evoca la imaginería bíblica de los Salmos, así
como su importación a la tradición castellana merced al Cántico espiritual
de san Juan de la Cruz y la mística española—de donde se extrae, a la

11
Véase, por ejemplo, los comentarios de Elsie Alvarado de Ricord en La obra
poética de Dámaso Alonso, Madrid, Gredos, 1968, pp. 42-44; Leopoldo de Luis en
“La poesía de Dámaso Alonso”, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, nº 234, pp. 727-
728; Víctor García de la Concha en La poesía española de 1935 a 1975. II De la
poesía existencia a la poesía social (1944-1950), Madrid, Cátedra, 1987, pp. 493-
494; o Rafael Lapesa en “Dámaso Alonso, humano maestro de humanidades”,
Homenaje Universitario a Dámaso Alonso, Madrid, Gredos, 1970, p. 14); entre
otros.
sazón, el lema de “Oscura noticia”—. Estas son, pues, las coordenadas

temáticas del texto: el afán de comunión con un Dios—cristiano—que se
busca apremiantemente.
Nos interesaremos ahora, sin embargo, por su realización estrictamente
formal. El poema—o los poemas—de “Sueño de las dos ciervas” adopta la
forma métrica de la llamada “estrofa sáfica”, la cual se define como
estrofa mixta compuesta por tres versos endecasílabos sáficos o
yámbicos—acentos en cuarta, sexta u octava y décima—y un pentasílabo
adónico—acento en primera—. Semejante patrón métrico no era—¿cómo
podría serlo?—en absoluto casual. Vinculado a Safo de Lesbos, el
principal cultivador de la estrofa sáfica en España no había sido otro que
Miguel de Unamuno. El mismo Unamuno a quien, junto a Antonio
Machado—sus “dos muertos queridos”—consagra Alonso la dedicatoria
inicial de Oscura noticia. Los mismos Antonio Machado y Miguel de
Unamuno—recordemos—con los que Dámaso relacionará en 1949 el
Escrito a cada instante de Leopoldo Panero como paradigmas de “arraigo”
(Alonso 1949). No en vano, el guiño unamuniano—métrica mediante—en
el “Sueño de las dos ciervas” trasciende el mero homenaje. Unamuno
había aplicado con maestría este modelo métrico en piezas tan conocidas
como los poemas “Castilla”, “Salamanca” o “El mar de encinas”, entre
otros. En todos estos planea, de nuevo no por casualidad, la imagen de
comunión con el paisaje y de elevación, desde él, hacia el cielo. Un
proceso de arraigo al paisaje que se puede tildar, abiertamente, de místico.
En el arranque del poema “Castilla” de Unamuno leemos:
(2) Tú me levantas, tierra de Castilla,

en la rugosa palma de tu mano,
al cielo que te enciende y te refresca,
al cielo, tu amo
En el cierre de “El mar de encinas”, por su parte, podemos leer:
(3) Aguarda el día del supremo abrazo

con un respiro poderoso y quieto
mientras, pasando, mensajeras nubes
templan su anhelo.
En este mar de encinas castellano

vestido de su pardo verde viejo
que no deja, del pueblo a que cobija
místico espejo.
110 Chapter Six
La unión “mística” con el paisaje de Unamuno, con su Castilla, liga así

a un tiempo la lírica de san Juan de la Cruz y el canto al terruño que
Alonso encontrará cinco años más tarde en el Leopoldo Panero de Escrito
a cada instante, paradigma, según se ha visto, de su definición de la
“poesía arraigada” en nuestra poesía de posguerra. Como engarce de
ambos extremos, el desaparecido profesor de Salamanca y su importación
a la métrica moderna de la estrofa sáfica. El mismo Unamuno, a su vez,
que había hecho de la búsqueda de Dios, y del desasosiego acechante en el
intento, uno de los ejes de su obra literaria. El mismo Unamuno que en “El
Cristo de Velázquez” ahondará en la misma dicotomía Dios-Hombre sobre
la que trabajará el crítico madrileño en los años cuarenta y cincuenta:
(4) ¡Tráenos el reino de tu Padre, Cristo,

que es el reino de Dios reino del Hombre!
Danos vida, Jesús, que es llamarada
que calienta y alumbra y que al pábulo
en vasija encerrado se sujeta;
vida que es llama, que en el tiempo vive
y en ondas, como el río, se sucede.
Estamos, a la postre, ante el mismo núcleo sobre el que Dámaso

construyó su Oscura noticia, sus Hijos de la ira y su posterior poemario
de Hombre y Dios (Málaga, El Arroyo de los Ángeles 1955). Un núcleo
temático aquí resuelto con cierto predominio—operando desde el paisaje y
la pertenencia—del eje “arraigado”.
Sobre el esquema sáfico unamuniano, sin embargo, Dámaso Alonso
introduce significativas variantes. En lugar de los tres endecasílabos de
rigor, presenta únicamente dos endecasílabos precediendo al pentasílabo.
¿Coadyuva este abreviar de la estrofa a la sensación de “huida” que las
gacelas del poema, según el propio poeta comentó más tarde (Alonso
1969, 200), encarnarían? En esta misma línea de contenido desequilibrio,
Alonso introduce asimismo otra variante métrica en la que, si bien el
pentasílabo es efectivamente adónico—marcado acento en primera—, no
se respeta enteramente el ritmo yámbico de los endecasílabos. Tampoco
fue semejante decisión—insistimos, ¿cómo podría serlo?—casual. El
empleo de un endecasílabo yámbico se venía definiendo estilísticamente
como un verso de mínima intensidad, lento y sosegado. Recordemos, no
en vano, el epígrafe dedicado a Garcilaso y titulado “Expresión de serena
majestad: ritmo yámbico” de Poesía española. El yámbico no habría sido
el adecuado, en consecuencia, para aquellas gacelas con afán de fuga. En
su lugar, Alonso tiende en sus endecasílabos a un ritmo dactílico-
trocaico—acentos en primera, sexta y décima—, ritmo definido por su

énfasis y energía.
(5) ¡Oh, terso claroscuro del durmiente!

Derribadas las lindes, fluyó el sueño.
Sólo el espacio.
Luz y sombra, dos ciervas velocísimas,

huyen hacia la hontana de aguas frescas,
centro de todo.
¿Vivir no es más que el roce de su viento?

Fuga del viento, angustia, luz y sombra:
forma de todo.
Fondo y forma se alían así en perfecta comunión. El léxico que va

componiendo la imagen alegórica de las dos gacelas—la luz y la sombra,
la fe y la duda, el arraigo y el desarraigo—da así como resultado un “terso
claroscuro”. Las sensaciones de fuga, de huida, de contraste, dan como
resultado asimismo la “angustia” de una quimera irresoluble que, en su luz
y su sombra, son al cabo—y subrayemos en este punto el matiz
estilístico—“forma de todo”. La dualidad domina así el poema, a la
sazón—de nuevo fondo y forma—partido en dos. No en vano, en su
continuación la rémora de esta dicotomía entre luz y sombre, fe y sombra,
Hombre y Dios, se resuelve en pesimista angustia, en agitado interrogante
a Dios.
(6) El árbol del espacio. Duerme el hombre.

Al fin de cada rama hay una estrella.
Noche: los siglos.
Duerme y se agita con terror: comprende.

Ha comprendido, y se le eriza el alma.
¡Gélido sueño!
Huye el gran árbol que florece estrellas,

huyen las ciervas de los pies veloces,
huye la fuente.
¿Por qué nos huyes, Dios, por qué nos huyes?

Tu veste en rastro, tu cabello en cauda,
¿dónde se anegan?
112 Chapter Six
Con todo ello, encontramos en Oscura noticia el mismo mensaje que

dominará Hijos de la ira. ¿Por qué, entonces, hablar de “arraigo” en uno y
“desarraigo” en otro? La respuesta tal vez se halle en ese “terso
claroscuro” del primer libro, libro en el que la forma métrica todavía
contiene una fe de vida, un asidero de certeza, una tradición castellana que
cumple las veces de un terruño de pertenencia en el que arraigar.
Porque el arraigo y el desarraigo—volvemos a subrayar—no son
posiciones irreconciliables sino, precisamente, elementos complementarios
de una realidad que, como las dos ciervas, solo pueden ser representadas
de manera dual. Con Dios huido, la trabazón entre Oscura noticia e Hijos
de la ira no es, en absoluto, abrupta. El poema “Solo” de Oscura noticia,
no en vano, ya había adelantado cierta irregularidad métrica. Una
irregularidad que es aquí todavía incipiente, dado el predominio de
endecasílabos y pentasílabos en el que se contiene aún el torrente lírico
que nos sobrevendrá en Hijos de la ira.
Ciertamente, representa este último poemario una intensificación de la
angustia que se había hecho patente en Oscura noticia. Para ello, es
nuevamente la forma la que colabora intrínsecamente en su desarrollo
lírico. Así, frente a la depurada y exigente métrica practicada y consumada
en Oscura noticia—según acabamos de comprobar—dispone Alonso en
sus Hijos de la ira una polimetría radical que varía entre los versos
bisílabos y el versículo de cincuenta sílabas métricas. Lo que la tradición
literaria y el ordenamiento métrico había contenido en Oscura noticia se
desboca—como el par de gacelas ya en huida—sin posibilidad de
remanso. Tomemos, como con el libro anterior, uno de sus poemas: “En el
día de los difuntos”. El poema suma en torrente aparentemente
incontrolado—nada queda al azar en este complejo verso libre—un total
de ciento ochenta y nueve versos, cuya medida oscila entre las tres
sílabas—el más breve—y las treinta y dos sílabas métricas—el más
largo—, con toda la gama intermedia presente. Arranca la composición de
la siguiente manera:
(7) ¡Oh! ¡No sois profundidad de horror y sueño,

muertos diáfanos, muertos nítidos,
muertos inmortales,
cristalizadas permanencias
de una gloriosa materia diamantina!
¡Oh ideas fidelísimas
a vuestra identidad, vosotros, únicos seres
en quienes cada instante
no es una roja dentellada de tiburón,
un traidor zarpazo de tigre!
¡Ay, yo no soy,
yo no seré
hasta que sea
como vosotros, muertos!
Yo me muero, me muero a cada instante,
perdido de mí mismo,
ausente de mí mismo,
lejano de mí mismo,
cada vez más perdido, más lejano, más ausente.
El predominio de la exclamación, junto a mecanismos formales

rudimentarios como el paralelismo, da cuerpo a la sensación de constante
agitación que conforma este largo poema. La exclamación enfática y la
machacona omnipresencia de la primera persona verbal y sus
pronombres—“yo”, “mí”—focalizan igualmente el discurso como bronco
diálogo entre el sujeto lírico y Dios y sus muertos, a los que se dirige. La
profusión adjetival en cascada paralelística—“perdido de mí mismo/
ausente de mí mismo/ lejano de mí mismo”—revisten al discurso lírico de
coloquialismo y premura, desestabilizando y acelerando—en huida—el
razonamiento del sujeto poético. Pero esta fuga no puede ser grácil como
la de una gacela en pos de un manso riachuelo, sino trabada y angustiosa
como quien se sabe perseguido por una manada de leonas—la muerte
sobre el Hombre—en plena caza. Para lograr semejante sensación, desde
luego, la forma ha de colaborar. Recurre así el autor de Hijos de la ira a
mecanismos que advertirá unos pocos años más tarde entre la lírica del
desarraigo. Así el encabalgamiento abrupto—completamente ausente en
Oscura noticia, por cierto—así la profusión de comas dentro de un verso
largo que, efectivamente, largo se nos hace.
(8) Oh, nunca os pensaré, hermanos, padre, amigos, con nuestra carne
humana, en nuestra diaria servidumbre,
en hálito o en afición semejantes
a las de vuestros tristes días de crisálidas.
Desde semejante moldura métrica, un léxico violento y chirriante

asalta al lector de Hijos de la ira, haciendo de la incomodidad el principal
vehículo de transmisión del mensaje poético.
(9) Pero, mañana, tal vez, esta noche

(¿cuándo, cuándo, Dios mío?)
he de volver a ser como era antes,
hoja seca, lata vacía, estéril excremento,
materia inerte, piedra rodada del atajo.
114 Chapter Six
Y ya no veo a lo lejos de qué avenidas yertas,

por qué puentes perdidos entre la niebla rojiza,
camina un pobre viejo, un triste saco de hierba que ya empieza a pudrirse,
sosteniendo sobre sus hombros agobiados
la luz pálida de los más turbios atardeceres,
la luz ceniza de sus recuerdos como harapos en fermentación,
vacilante, azotado por la ventisca,
con el alma transida, triste, alborotada y húmeda como una bufanda gris
que se [lleva el viento.
Este es, pues, el sentido práctico y teórico, poético y vital, de la célebre

dicotomía damasiana entre el “arraigo” y el “desarraigo”. Dos variaciones
estilísticas de un mismo presente histórico—la posguerra española y
mundial—y una misma angustia existencial. Como en Unamuno, como en
Machado, como en Panero, el paisaje castellano puede darnos la clave de
pertenencia, la toma de tierra, para mirar hacia arriba. Hacia ese cielo al
que se le pregunta y no responde. De aquel silencio puede nacer sin
embargo la duda, y la ira. El terruño natal no sirve entonces y, desde la
tradición métrica—pensemos en Blas de Otero—o fuera de ella—Hijos de
la ira—, el discurso poético se desborda en apresurados encabalgamientos
o en una incontenible tirada de versículos irregulares. Como dos gacelas
en huida de un hombre que solo se despierta. Dos gacelas—arraigo y
desarraigo—que lejos de ser opuestas fueron hermanas.
Alonso, Dámaso. Ensayos sobre poesía española. Madrid: Revista de
Occidente, 1944.
—. Hijos de la ira. Edición de Fanny Rubio. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1997.
—. Oscura noticia. Hombre y Dios. Edición de Antonio Chicharro
Chamorro. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1991.
—. Poemas escogidos. Edición del autor. Madrid: Gredos, 1969.
—. “Poesía arraigada.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 9 (1949): 671-709.
—. Poesía española. Ensayo de métodos y límites estilísticos. Madrid:
Gredos, 1971.
—. Poetas españoles contemporáneos. Madrid: Gredos, 1965.
Chicharro Chamorro, Antonio. Para una historia del pensamiento
literario en España. Madrid: CSIC, 2004.
Viñas Piquer, David. Historia de la crítica literaria. Barcelona: Ariel,
2007.
Vivanco, Luis Felipe. “La palabra encendida.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos
9 (1949): 723-733.

CHAPTER SEVEN
ANÁLISIS DEL DISCURSO SOBRE LA ALTERIDAD

ÉTNICO-RACIAL EN LA LITERATURA ESPAÑOLA
CONTEMPORÁNEA
CHRISTOPHE EMMANUEL SÉKA
Introducción
“El hombre no es un árbol: carece de raíces, tiene pies, camina. Desde los
tiempos del homo erectus circula en busca de pastos, de climas más
benignos, de lugares en los que resguardarse de las inclemencias del
tiempo y de la brutalidad de sus semejantes”, afirma Juan Goytisolo
(2004). Desde sus orígenes hasta nuestros días, el ser humano pues
siempre ha estado en movimiento. Los movimientos migratorios siempre
han formado parte integrante de las sociedades humanas.
Y, en todas las épocas y sociedades humanas, la literatura, en su
calidad de, entre otras funciones, plasmadora de la realidad social, siempre
ha dado cuenta de estos fenómenos migratorios. Textos como la epopeya
sumeria Poema de Gilgamesh, considerado el primer texto de toda la
historia de la literatura, o tan antiguos como el cuento La historia de
Sinuhé, considerado el mayor logro de toda la literatura egipcia antigua, o
el homérico texto fundacional griego La Odisea, o también el Cantar del
mío Cid testimonian el hecho de que el tema migratoria siempre ha sido
presente en las manifestaciones literarias.
Hoy en día, sigue estando presente este tema migratorio mediante la
problemática de la alteridad y de la diferencia étnico-racial que genera el
fenómeno de la inmigración con una intensidad cada vez mayor en las
sociedades occidentales actuales, convertidas en nuestros días en el mayor
escenario de encuentro y mezcla de culturas. Estos encuentros y mezclas
culturales dan lugar a numerosas reservas como las manifestadas en la
Sociedad multiétnica de Giovanni Sartori y a acalorados debates sobre las
identidades nacionales europeas y la identidad comunitaria europea como
116 Chapter Seven
lo observa Montserrat Iglesias Santos. Deriva de ello la producción y

circulación en las diferentes esferas sociales de discursos sobre la
(re)definición de esta identidad nacional/comunitaria europea y asimismo
de la identidad exógena o alteridad.
Este trabajo se interesa pues por los discursos sobre la alteridad
africana presentes en la literatura española actual. Entendemos la palabra
“discurso” básicamente en el sentido que le asigna Van Dijk (2001, 192):
“un evento comunicativo específico, en general, y una forma escrita u oral
de interacción verbal o de uso del lenguaje, en particular”. Por su
pluralización, nos queremos referir a la diversidad genérica que caracteriza
el campo del discurso y que se da en la obra literaria. La literatura, en
efecto, en su calidad de reflejo de la sociedad se instituye como el espacio
donde se mezcla la masa de los diversos discursos que se dan en la
sociedad, este conglomerado que Marc Angenot llama “discurso social”1 o
en términos de Jean Dubois “l’universel du discours” (Jacques
Guilhaumou 1995, 76).
Hemos escogido centrarnos en un corpus dramático por el mejor
parecido que se da entre la situación elocutiva dentro del texto dramático y
la vida real. Debida a la escasez de textos dramáticos españoles sobre
inmigración africana disponibles y en honor a la brevedad que exige este
capítulo, hemos limitado el corpus a dos textos: Ahlán de Jerónimo López
Mozo y La mirada del hombre oscuro de Ignacio del Moral.
Hemos articulado el análisis sobre dos de los actos discursivos
fundamentales que se dan en la relación al mundo y al otro: denominar y
caracterizar.
1. La denominación
Simone Bonnafous (2013) destaca dos vías de exploración de un
corpus en análisis del discurso. La primera, la entrada lexical tiene como
base palabras consideradas muy significativas de una época, de un
contexto (mots pivot, mots témoin). Es la vía practicada por ejemplo por
Emilie Née (2012, 15) quien justifica este enfoque con las siguientes
palabras:
Le lexique a toujours été et reste un angle d’attaque fructueux pour

1
“On pourrait d’abord appeler ‘discours social’, de manière purement empirique,
la somme de tout ce qui se dit et s’écrit dans un état de société, tout ce qui
s’imprime, tout ce qui se représente aujourd’hui dans les médias électroniques.
Tout ce qui se narre et s’argumente, si l’on pose que narrer et argumenter sont les
deux grands modes de mise en discours” (Marc Angenot 1988, 24).
Étnico-racial en la literatura española contemporánea 117
l’analyse du discours (…), sans doute parce qu’il constitue une dimension
linguistique qui entretient un lien essentiel, même s’il est indirect, avec la
réalité (la langue et le monde étant “inséparablement distincts” pour
reprendre la jolie formule de P. Caussat 1998, 182) ; sans doute également
en raison de la nature sémiotique du mot, celui-ci présentant la potentialité
de concentrer des discours déjà tenus (le dialogisme de Bakhtine).
La otra vía, la entrada formular, aplicada por Krieg-Planque (2003) se

articula más bien entorno a una fórmula2. Nosotros, en este punto,
tratándose de denominación y pues de nombre o sea de palabra, hemos
optado por la vía de exploración lexical.
El primer acto discursivo pues que realiza un locutor en su relación al
otro es la designación de este otro por un nombre. En el corpus observado,
la denominación propia de los otros africanos se opera sobre la base de su
identidad étnica o racial. Los nombres usados con mayor frecuencia son
negro y moro:
Tabla 7-1. Nombres usados con mayor frecuencia para referirse a los
otros africanos
Término Ocurrencias Término Ocurrencias

“negro” 11 “moro” 28
“moreno” 3 “árabe” 3
“africano” 2 “magrebí(es)” 7
“senegalés” 0 “marroquí(es)” 3
Se dan dos contextos y consecuentemente dos modalidades de uso

discursivo de estos nombres. En el primer contexto, tenemos un discurso
de los sujetos autóctonos —y algunas veces del narrador— sobre los otros
africanos:
(1) Luego pone en un blanco de corcho, la foto de un negro. (López Mozo

2008, 52)
(2) GALLARDO.- ¿Conoces a un negro que llaman Ammar? (López

Mozo 2008, 79)

2
Fórmula: “un ensemble de formulations qui, du fait de leurs emplois à un
moment donné et dans un espace public donné, cristallisent des enjeux politiques
et sociaux que ces expressions contribuent dans le même temps à construire”
(Krieg-Planque 2003, 7).

118 Chapter Seven
(3) GALLARDO.- Tiene cara de conocer el paradero del negro. (López

Mozo 2008, 79)
(4) VECINO 1º.- Alguien tala los árboles que dejó en pie aquel negro.
(López Mozo 2008, 87)
(5) Relata que, una mañana, al salir a la calle, el protagonista descubre que
no sólo están pintarrajeadas las paredes con esos garabatos que usan los
moros para entenderse. (López Mozo 2008, 50)
(6) ESPOSO.- Y ya ves, ahora tienes a los moros a dos pasos de tu casa.
(7) MATEO.- (Respirando con alivio.) Es un moro. (López Mozo 2008,

78)
(8) Gustaba de los moros jóvenes. (López Mozo 2008, 100)
(9) “El padre es moro y los moros no me gustan” (López Mozo 2008, 101)
Observamos en estos casos un uso de los sustantivos “negro” y

“moro(s)” siempre precedido de un determinante. La presencia de este
elemento gramatical parece darle un valor “neutral” al uso de estos
términos, limitar este uso al solo acto discursivo de denominar. En esta
misma situación discursiva, los términos “negro” y “moro” son empleados
también algunas veces de modo adjetival, un modo en el que el uso de
estos términos sigue pareciendo neutral, limitándose al acto de designar:
(10) Busca con la mirada y encuentra la de un hombre negro que, a verse

sorprendido, le sonríe y abandona su sitio para sentarse a su lado. (López
Mozo 2008, 67)
(11) AMMAR, un hombre negro, entra y se va a un extremo de la barra.

(12) JUANA LA LOCA.- (Entre risas.) Estás chiflado, rey moro. (López
Mozo 2008, 26)
(13) En la habitación había un niño medio moro. (López Mozo 2008, 100)
(14) “El padre es moro y los moros no me gustan”. (López Mozo 2008,
101)
En el segundo contexto, tenemos un discurso siempre de los sujetos

autóctonos—y algunas veces del narrador—pero esta vez dirigido a los
otros africanos:
(15) GALLARDO.- Pues fíjate bien cómo se hace. (A AMMAR.) Ya estás

cogiendo la puerta, negro. (López Mozo 2008, 72)
(16) CAMIONERO.- ¿Y qué, moro de mierda? (López Mozo 2008, 27)
(17) Allí esperaba confiando en que desde algún coche le gritaran: “¡Moro,
sube!” (López Mozo 2008, 97)
(18) VECINO 2º.- Parece moro. (López Mozo 2008, 87)
Observamos en estos últimos ejemplos la ausencia de determinante

delante de los sustantivos “negro” y “moro”. En el ejemplo (18), la
presencia del verbo “parecer” que traduce un intento de identificación,
actúa como agente neutralizador. En el ejemplo (17), el uso discursivo del
sustantivo “moro” es vocativo y se limita también a designar a un sujeto
entre otros. Sin embargo, en los ejemplos (15) y (16), por el concurso de
otros elementos, los sustantivos “negro” y “moro” van más allí de las
funciones apelativa y de designación y denominación. En los ejemplos
(15), junto a la ausencia de determinante delante del sustantivo,
observamos una orden expulsiva del locutor Gallardo. En el ejemplo (16),
observamos más bien la presencia al principio de la oración de la
expresión “Y qué” que denota indiferencia y hasta un estado a la
defensiva, de hostilidad de parte del locutor. Es más, en esta oración,
aparece junto al sustantivo moro la locución adjetiva malsonante “de
mierda”—a menudo empleada junto a “negro” y “moro” en el discurso
racista—y el lector puede hacerse una idea de la entonación con la que el
locutor emite esta frase. El concurso de todos estos elementos arma los
sustantivos “negro” y “moro” de una carga negativa de racismo y
desprecio y remite a una formación ideológica racista. Vemos pues que un
uso discursivo u otro de ambos sustantivos les dota de una simple función
denominativa o les carga con su sentido despreciativo. Recordémoslo,
ambos sustantivos tienen un sentido doble: uno que es puramente
etnológico, denominativo, basado en una caracterización natural o
digamos racial, étnica y otro sentido que tiene un toque más bien
peyorativo, basado en oscuras circunstancias históricas. En el caso de
“negro”, el primer sentido remite a la designación de una persona piel
oscura. La palabra negro procedería del bereber n-gher (“río”), término

120 Chapter Seven
que dio nombre al río Níger (latín Nigris)3 y que generó también la palabra
nigritae que designaba a la gente que vivía junto al río o gente del río. Con
el tiempo, por el color oscuro del río y el color oscuro de los nigritae, la
palabra se volvió sinónimo de “oscuro”, sustituyendo con el tiempo la
palabra romana ater para significar el color que ahora llamamos negro.
Según otra teoría desarrollada por la Ferris States University en su estudio
Nigger and caricatures4, el origen de la palabra negro se situaría en la voz
latina niger, usada para describir al color más oscuro, que no refleja
ninguna luz. Se convirtió posteriormente esta palabra latina en el
sustantivo “negro” en portugués, español e inglés y nègre en francés, para
designar a los individuos africanos de piel oscura. Richard B. Moore
(2013) sitúa el primer uso de la palabra “negro” como sustantivo en
relación con la población de África a la época después de 1441, cuando los
exploradores portugueses bajaron la costa africana hasta alcanzar el río
Senegal. Denominaron pues a los pueblos de más arriba del río moros o
azenegues y a las poblaciones de más abajo del río, de piel más oscura,
negros. Con la esclavización de las poblaciones negras por los
portugueses, el término muy pronto se convertirá en “sinónimo de
esclavo” (Martín Casares 2000). Durante la posterior colonización de
África, el sustantivo mantendrá este sentido peyorativo.
En lo que se refiere a “moro”, el término es derivado el latín maurus—
que significa “negro” (Ramón Cabrera 1837, 464)—, procedente éste a su
vez de las voces griegas mauri y maurós. Estos términos son los que
usaron griegos y romanos para designar a los pueblos norteafricanos
habitantes de Maurusia, el antiguo reino de Mauritania. Este reino de
Mauritania, convertido en la Mauritania romana tras ser conquistada,
abarcaba bajo Calígula (años 37 y 41 d.C., respectivamente) la parte
occidental del actual Magreb—provincia imperial de Mauritania
Tingitana—que corresponde al actual Marruecos, y la parte central del
actual Magreb—provincia imperial de Mauritania Cesariense—
correspondiente a la actual Argelia. En la España medieval, el término
moro conservó el mismo sentido que le habían asignado los griegos y los
romanos, usándose para designar a las poblaciones norteafricanas,
musulmanas y bereberes, que invadieron el sur de la península—Al-
Ándalus—en el siglo VIII. A partir de la Reconquista, el término pasó a

3
Plinio el Joven, siglo I d.C. en
http://www.dicolatin.com/FR/LAK/0/NIGRIS/index.htm.
4
Disponible en http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/caricature/.
designar genéricamente a todos los musulmanes5. Así se denominaban a

todos los territorios ocupados por musulmanes, tanto en África
septentrional como en Oriente Próximo, “tierra de moros”, el equivalente
del término árabe Dar-al-islam, que significa “la tierra del islam”. En esta
acepción, pervivía la imagen de “contrapuesto al cristiano”, de enemigo—
enemigo a la fe cristiana.
La carga peyorativa que tienen los sustantivos “negro” y “moro” es lo
que lleva a algunos locutores como Mateo que quieren librarse de toda
sospecha o encasillamiento ideológico racista a eludir su uso, empleando
en su lugar términos menos polémicos y eufemísticos como “moreno”—
“Hazme caso, moreno. Llevas las de perder” (López Mozo 2008, 75)—o el
gentilicio “marroquí” o “magrebí”.
2. La caracterización
El segundo acto discursivo fundamental que suele realizar el locutor en
su relación al otro es asignarle características. En este ejercicio,
observamos toda una retórica racista que se despliega en el discurso sobre
el otro. Coincidimos con Van Dijk (2001) en que ese ejercicio se produce
principalmente a nivel temático cuando el locutor emite un discurso sobre
los otros. En el corpus tomado en cuenta en este trabajo y en un corpus
más amplio observado en otro trabajo (Séka 2014), esta caracterización
suele articularse sobre dos ejes temáticos.
El primer eje temático es la diferencia. El énfasis en la diferencia del
otro casi siempre aparece en la relación discursivo al otro a la hora de
caracterizarle. Esta diferencia parte de una negativa a la identificación
manifiesta en la homogeneidad que se les impone a los otros africanos
como en La mirada del hombre oscuro:
(19) LA MADRE.- ¿De dónde vendrá?

EL PADRE.- ¡Y yo qué sé! De África. (Del Moral 1992, 37)
Con esta afirmación, el padre simplifica el origen del hombre negro

definiéndolo como procedente de un lugar homogéneo y opuesto al suyo.
Los otros son “catalogados con idénticos patrones al pertenecer al mismo
grupo (mientras que Nosotros somos todos diferentes individualmente
unos de otros)” (Van Dijk 2001).

5
Pervive este sentido hoy en día, como lo podemos comprobar en una de las
definiciones que da el Diccionario de la RAE (22ª ed.) de moro: “3. adj. Que
profesa la religión islámica. U. t. c. s.”.

122 Chapter Seven
La diferencia destacada por el nosotros en relación a los otros se

aborda a nivel cultural y se traduce en términos de superioridad cultural
del nosotros europeo e inferioridad de la cultura de los otros africanos por
no decir ausencia de cultura de este otro. Esta caracterización de los otros
se suele realizar sobre la base de estereotipos. Los estereotipos,
recordémoslo, son imágenes o ideas colectivas, reduccionistas,
“generalizantes”, “preconstruidas” e “inmutables” acerca de algo o
alguien. Son ideas o imágenes heredadas que los miembros del grupo
acogen por lo que se ha dado a conocer como “ley del mínimo esfuerzo”
(Herrero Cecilia, 2006) junto a la falta de interés por conocer al otro como
es realmente, conocerlo más allá de las creencias. Así, en La mirada del
hombre oscuro, la familia española, desde el primer momento que entra en
contacto con el hombre negro, reproduce el imaginario colonial en su
caracterización de éste, estableciendo África como inversión de Europa6.
Así, al hombre negro, le atribuyen los sujetos españoles las típicas
características de primitivismo y salvajismo:
(20) LA MADRE.- Le puede haber gustado [el mechero]. A lo mejor se

cree que es un fetiche mágico de esos. Como esas gentes son tan
prehistóricas. (Del Moral 1992, 22).
(21) EL PADRE.- ¡Qué no te acerques! Vámonos de aquí. Este tipo es un

salvaje. (Del Moral 1992, 45).
(22) EL PADRE.- Y más vale que te vuelvas a tu selva, que aquí pegas
menos que un pulpo en un garaje. (Del Moral 1992, 48).
(23) EL PADRE.- […] Cada vez llueve más, y nosotros aquí con este cafre
(Del Moral 1992, 47).
El discurso de la madre no sólo ofrece una visión colonial de Ombasi

sino que respalda y confirma cada uno de los comentarios racistas de sus
hijos, educándolos y reforzando así la retórica de la siguiente generación.
Por otra parte, si bien el padre cuestiona y ridiculiza los comentarios de su
mujer, nunca los llega a rebatir con argumentos convincentes, por lo que la
mirada colonial llega finalmente a ser compartida por toda la familia.
Cuando la hija se refiere a las únicas palabras que Ombasi pronuncia en
español al intentar establecer comunicación con la familia: “¡Viva

6
A modo recordatorio, al final del siglo XIX, cuando la exploración europea y la
colonización del interior africano empezaron en serio, se consideraba a África
como “varada e históricamente abandonada, una tierra de fetichismo, poblada por
caníbales, demonios y brujos” (McClintock 1995, 41).
España!” e “Indurain”, destaca entre los comentarios de la madre su

énfasis en la carencia de cultura e historia de Ombasi:
(24) LA NIÑA.- Mamá, ¿por qué siempre dice [Ombasi] lo mismo?

LA MADRE.- Porque a lo mejor no sabe decir otra cosa.
LA NIÑA.- ¿No sabe hablar más?
LA MADRE.- No hija, no, estas personas negras son muy incultas. (Del
Moral 1992, 20)
Si bien Ombasi las repite en varias ocasiones para procurar un

acercamiento hacia el sujeto español, esto solo lo consigue la primera vez.
Su intento de relacionarse con el español usando su idioma se verá
frustrado ya que, como puede desprenderse de la conversación, el uso del
español por parte de Ombasi no se ve como un conocimiento que posee el
extranjero, sino como una carencia. Este aspecto, lo destaca con claridad
Franz Fanon (1952, 26-27):
Je rencontre un Allemand ou un Russe parlant mal le français. Par gestes,

j’essaie de lui donner le renseignement qu’il réclame, mais ce faisant, je
n’ai garde d’oublier qu’il a une langue propre, un pays, et qu’il est peut-
être avocat ou ingénieur dans sa culture. En tout cas, il est étranger à mon
groupe, et ses normes doivent être différentes. Dans le cas du Noir, rien de
pareil. Il n’s pas de culture, pas de civilisation, pas ce “long passé
d’historie”.
Las palabras en español que articula el hombre negro no son

interpretadas por la familia española como un intento del extranjero de
establecer un diálogo en un idioma diferente del suyo, esto es, diferente a
un idioma que domina. Su impuesta condición de ser salvaje implica una
carencia de todo lo considerado civilizado—ya que sólo sabe dos palabras
(en español)—una carencia que lo define, de una forma eurocéntrica,
como un ser sin cultura.
En el discurso de la familia español, no falta tampoco en la
caracterización del otro africano como ser carente de cultura o primitivo el
clásico estereotipo de ser antropófago:
(25) EL NIÑO.- Dice que se quiere comer a la niña. (Del Moral 1992, 15)
(26) EL NIÑO.- ¿Dónde está el muerto que había aquí contigo?

[Ombasi le hace una señal de invitación para comer coquinas]
LA NIÑA.-: ¡Se ha comido al otro negro! […] ¿Y si me come?
LA MADRE.- No te come hija, es bueno.
LA NIÑA.- No, es malo, se come a otros.
LA MADRE.- Bueno, pero ahora no tiene hambre. (Del Moral 1992, 31)

124 Chapter Seven
Esta caracterización caníbal participa también de la deshumanización

de este otro africano que ha sobrevivido con fuerza en el discurso racista y
que suele operarse en éste. Esta deshumanización se observa claramente
en una retórica “animalizante” de este otro:
(27) LA NIÑA.- Tiene unos dientes muy grandes.

LA MADRE.- Porque viene de la selva y allí está lleno de fieras. (Del
Moral 1992, 27)
El énfasis en el tamaño de los dientes de Ombasi lo sitúa “entre las

bestias salvajes”. La idea de canibalismo consolida su “bestialidad” y lo
emplaza en el “extremo exótico” de la otredad (Jahoda 1999, xv).
Otro ejemplo de la percepción “animalizante” del otro negro en este
texto se da cuando al acercarse el inmigrante a la familia, el padre lo aleja
con el rastrillo que había estado usando para buscar coquinas diciéndole, a
la manera que se habla a un perro: “¡No te muevas! ¡Lárgate! [ y
dirigiéndose a su familia] Tranquilos, como vea que tengamos miedo es
peor”. Aunque para el lector queda claro que el hombre negro solo
pretende acercarse a la familia para poder establecer comunicación, las
palabras de del padre de la familia española dan a entender que más que
tratar con una persona parecen estar haciéndolo con un animal que les
atacará si percibe cierto nerviosismo en sus “víctimas”.
La diferencia cultural observada por el nosotros europeo y traducido en
su discurso adquiere relevancia como traducción de lo inconciliable que es
la “cultura” de los otros africanos con la del nosotros europeo y pues
como elemento de justificación de la negación de su aceptación. Esta idea
ilumina y subraya la separación entre la familia (o “lo civilizado”) y “lo
salvaje” (en este caso, el africano), imposibilitando cualquier posible
acercamiento debido a su insuperable diferencia. Los estereotipos en
efecto—fundamento de esta visión del otro—operan, como subraya Stuart
Hall (2010, 430) una división, “despliegan una estrategia de
‘hendimiento’”, “facilitan la unión o el enlace de todos nosotros que
somos ‘normales’ en una ‘comunidad imaginada’ y envían hacia un exilio
simbólico a todos ellos—los ‘Otros’—que son de alguna forma diferentes,
‘fuera de límites’”. Separan el “nosotros” del “ellos”. Dividen lo “normal”
y lo “aceptable” de lo “anormal” y de lo “inaceptable”. Excluyen todo lo
que es diferente. Como argumenta Dyer (1977, 430):
un sistema de estereotipos sociales se refiere a lo que está por dentro y

fuera de los límites de la normalidad [es decir, la conducta que se acepta
como “normal” en cualquier cultura]. Los tipos son instancias que indican
aquellos que viven de acuerdo con las reglas de la sociedad (tipos sociales)
y aquellos designados para que las reglas los excluyan (estereotipos). Por
esta razón, los estereotipos son también más rígidos que los tipos sociales
[...] Los límites […] deben quedar claramente delineados y también los
estereotipos, uno de los mecanismos del mantenimiento de límites, son
característicamente fijos, inalterables, bien definidos.
El segundo eje temático de la caracterización del otro africano es la

amenaza. En el discurso del nosotros europeo sobre los otros africanos,
una constante es el desarrollo de una retórica caracterizando a estos otros
como una amenaza. Esta percepción y caracterización como amenaza se
manifiesta primero en un discurso “culpabilizador” estableciendo la
presencia de este otro como fuente del desorden, como el causante o chivo
expiatorio (Girard 1986) de los problemas surgidos. En La mirada del
hombre oscuro, la familia española atribuye a la llegada del hombre negro
las desaventuras que están teniendo, lo ven como el factor que ha venido a
perturbar la tranquilidad de sus vidas:
(28) LA MADRE.- Todo ha sido por su culpa. Estábamos tan bien hasta
que apareció. ¿A qué habrá venido? (Del Moral 1992, 37)
(29) EL PADRE.- […] ¡Todo por tu culpa! (Del Moral 1992, 47)
(30) EL PADRE.- Y todo por culpa del negro. ¡Si no hubiera aparecido el
negro! (Del Moral 1992, 53)
Como lo observa Freud (1976, 220), lo otro siempre se ha

asociado en las sociedades humanas con “lo ominoso”, lo “no familiar”,
“la inquietante extranjería”, “aquella variedad de lo terrorífico que se
remonta a lo consabido de antiguo, a lo familiar desde hace largo tiempo”.
Según el psicoanalista, el extranjero para la mente humana es igual de
ambiguo que la muerte, el final o el origen. Mary Douglas (1966), yendo
en el mismo sentido que Freud decía que cualquier cosa que está fuera de
lugar se considera contaminada, peligrosa, tabú. Sentimientos negativos se
congregan a su alrededor. Provoca una angustia aterradora. Esta angustia
se observa en la retórica de miedo presente en el discurso sobre el otro de
la familia española en La mirada del hombre oscuro:
(31) LA MADRE.- No puedo [dormir]. Me duele la espalda. Además, me

da miedo. ¿Y si nos hace algo? (Del Moral 1992, 35)
(32) LA MADRE.- […] Toda tu familia en peligro y tú te duermes. (Del

Moral 1992, 37)

126 Chapter Seven
(33) LA MADRE.- ¡No sé cómo puedes dormir tan tranquilo! […] ¿Y si se

despierta y nos hace algo? (Del Moral 1992, 36)
(34) LA MADRE:- […] ese negro que nos podía haber matado y que casi
nos desgracia a la niña. (Del Moral 1992, 52)
Este sentimiento de miedo presente en el discurso sobre el otro

percibido como amenaza encuentra su justificación en la consideración de
este otro como peligro absoluto, un peligro triple. Un peligro primero para
la seguridad urbana perceptible en el discurso sobre el otro en la
asociación de éste con la criminalidad y la imagen del otro africano
delincuente, perjudicial para la sociedad occidental:
(35) LA MADRE.- […] Luego acaban todos metidos en las drogas. Hay
que decírselo a la Guardia Civil. (Del Moral 1992, 37)
(36) LA MADRE.- ¡Antonio! ¡Antonio!, ¡Déjale y vámonos, antes de que

nos haga algo! Dale lo que tengas y vámonos. (Del Moral 1992, 15)
(37) EL PADRE.- Por si lo que quiere es robar. Es mejor no hacerle frente.

Toma esto también. (Del Moral 1992, 17)
(38) LA MADRE.- ¡Ten cuidado, a ver si te hace algo! (Del Moral 1992,
19)
(39) CADÁVER.- La mujer ha soñado que ibas a forzarla. (Del Moral

1992, 40)
(40) ESPOSO.- Te he dicho que no salgas sola a la calle. Es peligroso y

desagradable. (López Mozo 2008, 51)
El otro africano es considerado también un peligro para la salud en su

calidad de vector de gérmenes y enfermedades, como podemos observar
en estas frases de la madre española en La mirada del hombre oscuro:
(41) LA MADRE: Estos negros están llenos de microbios, José Antonio, lo

dicen todos los días en la tele. (Del Moral 1992, 33)
(42) LA MADRE.- ¿No tendrá pulgas la chaqueta ésta [de Ombasi]? (Del
Moral 1992, 33)
(43) LA MADRE.- Me da repeluco. ¿Y si la navaja tiene sida o algo? (Del

Moral 1992, 33).
(44) LA MADRE.- No me gusta que el niño esté tan pegado a él. A lo

mejor tiene piojos; o la tiña, que creo que en esos países la tienen mucho.
Hasta la lepra. (Del Moral 1992, 36)
Al hombre negro, se le percibe como culpable potencial de transmitir

enfermedades a los miembros del país de acogida y esta afirmación de la
madre se ve reforzada por la “verdad” que transmite la televisión, un
medio en el que sigue predominando una percepción poco positiva de la
inmigración. Esta percepción del otro negro como portador de
enfermedades viene heredado del imaginario colonial de un África donde
había enfermedades tremendas, fiebres implacables que acababan con los
intentos de colonización, una tierra insalubre. Por este motivo, como
subraya Fígares Romero de la Cruz (2003, 149) en la mente de los
colonizadores, “colonizar, civilizar, significaba sanar, mientras que
barbarie, salvajismo, por el contrario, eran sinónimos de enfermedad y
hasta de muerte”. Esta imagen de África como tierra de insalubridad y de
los virus más mortíferos se mantiene todavía hoy en día en el imaginario
colectivo europeo. No en vano el origen del virus del sida, que menciona
la madre española y que asocia al hombre negro, se ha adscrito al
continente africano, aun sin pruebas suficientes que lo demuestren. En La
mirada del hombre oscuro, hasta este momento de evocación del peligro
de enfermedad que representa el otro negro, el padre de familia ha dejado
claro que no comparte los comentarios racistas de la madre, aunque sus
respuestas se han limitado a simples “¡Qué tonterías le dices a la niña!”,
opinión que repite varias veces. Sin embargo, a partir de aquel momento,
tras escuchar a su mujer hablar de las enfermedades que puede transmitir
el hombre negro y escupir la coquina se posiciona del lado de su mujer.
El tercer peligro que suele asociar el nosotros europeo al otro africano
es el peligro para la seguridad laboral. Es recurrente en el discurso sobre
los otros su percepción como aquel que viene a contribuir al aumento del
paro en la sociedad de acogida, a quitarle al autóctono su empleo, su
bienestar:
(45) LA MADRE.- ¿Para qué habrá venido?

EL PADRE.- Cualquiera sabe, a buscar trabajo.
LA MADRE.- Pues ya ves tú, ¡como que aquí no hay paro! Al final
terminará metido en la droga como todos, lo estoy viendo. En cuanto
veamos a la Guardia Civil hay que decírselo. (Del Moral 1992, 37)
(46) CADÁVER.- Aquí será peor. Aquí no nos quieren. Ni siquiera les
interesamos para robarnos. Creen que venimos a quitarles lo suyo. Aunque
nos conformemos con lo que ellos no quieren, es igual. Creen que

128 Chapter Seven
manchamos el aire pestilente que respiran. Ya has visto a estos. Se

comportan como si fueras a matarlos. (Del Moral 1992, 40)
La percepción del otro como ser amenazante, ser quien viene a

expoliar al autóctono europeo de los suyo se traduce claramente en el
discurso del nosotros en términos de invasión del otro perceptible en
Ahlán en el uso explícito de la palabra “invasión”—“esta paulatina
invasión” (Del Moral 1992, 50)—, en metáforas en que la invasión es
aludida con términos del ámbito bélico-militar como “ejército”—“ejército
de obreros clandestinos y de parados que produce miedo” (Del Moral 1992,
50)—, términos tomados del implacable e imparable mundo natural como
“marea”—“esa incontenible marea de negros y morenos” (Del Moral 1992,
50)—o términos pandémicos como “plaga” (Del Moral 1992, 83).
Observamos también en este discurso la asimilación metafórica de los
otros africanos a los “conejos”, animales prolíficos e invasivos que hay
que exterminar:
(47) Procedentes del norte de África, se cree que en Numidia tuvieron su

primer asiento, han invadido el sur y el oeste de nuestro continente y,
siendo de naturaleza prolífica, han llegado a convertirse en una verdadera
plaga. Habitan toda clase de terrenos, desde las llanuras hasta los montes.
Pasan buena parte del día ocultos en sus madrigueras o tumbados entre las
matas y a la caída de la tarde empiezan a vagar en busca de alimento. Se
acercan a las casas y a menudo entran en ellas para devorar cuanto hallan.
Son tímidos, pero astutos, y cuando sienten nuestra proximidad procuran
pasar desapercibidos. Todo lo arrasan a su paso y todo lo cubren con sus
sucios excrementos. En algunos países, conscientes de lo peligrosa que
resulta su presencia, se les persigue encarnizadamente. Hora es de que aquí
sigamos su ejemplo. De lo contrario, muy pronto será imposible librarse de
ellos. Cerremos los oídos a quiénes se empeñen en convencernos,
cualquiera sabe con qué estúpidos argumentos, de que debemos aceptar su
presencia. No hagamos el más mínimo caso a los que esgriman que existen
leyes que les protegen o anuncien otras nuevas. El exterminio del conejo es
nuestra más urgente tarea. Todos los medios valen si se demuestran
eficaces. (López Mozo 2008, 83-84)
Abunda también en este tipo de discurso la presencia de expresiones de

cantidad que aluden a la presencia generalizada y la expansión—“las
calles se iban llenando de morenos” (López Mozo 2008, 50) / “negros y
morenos que empezaba a superarnos en número” (López Mozo 2008, 50) /
“Por todas partes se respira angustia” (López Mozo 2008, 50) / “Las calles,
llenas de tenderetes, parecen un zoco por el que se hace difícil andar.”
(López Mozo 2008, 50) / “Y ya ves, ahora tienes a los moros a dos pasos de
tu casa.” (López Mozo 2008, 51) / “Te los tropiezas por todas partes” (López
Mozo 2008, 51)—y expresiones que hacen referencia a la expoliación o
apropiación ajena—“tenía el presentimiento de que pronto seríamos
nosotros los extranjeros” (López Mozo 2008, 50) / “A la chita callando se
adueñaron de las pensiones y ocuparon(…)” (López Mozo 2008, 50) / “Los
forasteros se han hecho los amos y nosotros empezamos a sentirnos ovejas
en corral ajeno” (López Mozo 2008, 50) / “Toda la ciudad va camino de
convertirse en bastarda” (López Mozo 2008, 51). Esta percepción de la
presencia del otro africano, y norteafricano en particular, es el fruto de los
fantasmas del pasado “moro” que invadió la península Ibérica en el siglo
VIII. Derrida (1993, 31) habla al respecto de hantologie u “ontología
asediada por fantasmas”. Freud (1976, 247) habla de la misma noción de
Derrida pero en vez de fantasmas los denomina “dobles” que invaden
nuestras vidas: “los muertos siguen viviendo y se vuelven visibles en los
sitios de su anterior actividad”.
Es pues esta amenaza que constituyen estos otros, lo que justifica su
puesta bajo vigilancia policial, perceptible por ejemplo en Ahlán en la
presencia siempre cerca de los términos haciendo referencia a estos otros
de términos que pertenecen al campo léxico de la policía o de la ley:
(48) Inmigrantes clandestinos, detenidos, etc. (López Mozo 2008, 2)
(49) Tras la reja de una ventana del centro [de internamiento] de

inmigrantes, primer plano de un rostro joven. (López Mozo 2008, 23)
(50) Subiendo de uno en uno en el todoterreno de la guardia civil. Un

inmigrante que se ha herido en las piernas al desembarcar, camina apoyado
en un agente y en otro arrestado. (López Mozo 2008, 23)
(51) Reconoce a muchos compatriotas entre los inmigrantes. Sus

documentos de identidad son sus propios rostros. (López Mozo 2008, 32)
(52) Un POLICÍA vigila a los inmigrantes que ocupan las bancas alargadas
dispuestas frente a un televisor encendido. (López Mozo 2008, 67)
(53) Como otros inmigrantes, ilegales como él, acudía cada mañana a una
rotonda a la entrada del pueblo. (López Mozo 2008, 97)
(54) Desde que la alcaldesa dictó un bando recomendando a los vecinos

que no contrataran a emigrantes ilegales, nadie le ha vuelto a ofrecer
trabajo. (López Mozo 2008, 98)

130 Chapter Seven
Conclusiones
El discurso sobre el otro africano en los textos literarios reproduce el
“discurso social” que se produce y circula en las diferentes esferas de la
sociedad. Se trata de un discurso esencialmente despreciativo y hostil, de
ideología racista que se manifiesta en un uso de los ambivalentes nombres
comúnmente para designar a estos otros—“negro” y “moro”—que los
carga de su sentido denigrante e “inferiorizante”. Es por otra parte un
discurso que se articula en torno a unos temas constantes—diferencia y
amenaza—y que opera mediante una determinada lexicalización y
específicos dispositivos retóricos—metáforas sobre todo, como las de la
invasión—una caracterización “estereotipada” de este otro, basada en
percepciones imaginadas, heredadas de épocas anteriores, la visión que
Edward Said (2002) llama “orientalismo” para los otros norteafricanos y
que inspirándose en esta término de Said, el Premio Nobel de Literatura
1993, Tom Morrison7 llama “africanismo” en el caso de los otros
negroafricanos.
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Douglas, M. Purity and Danger. Londres: Routledge, 1966.

7
“I use it as a term for the denotative and connotative blackness that African
people have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions,
readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these
people… The United States, of course, is not unique in the construction of
Africanism. South America, England, France, Germany, Spain—the cultures of all
these countries have participated in and contributed to some aspect of an ‘invented
Africa’”, citado por Cornejo Parriego (2007, 27).
Girard, R. El chivo expiatorio. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1986.

Dyer, R. Gays and Film. Londres: British Film Institute, 1977.
Fanon, F. Peau noire, masques blancs. París: Éditions du Seuil, 1952.
Fígares Romero De La Cruz, M. D. La colonización del imaginario:
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Investigaciones etnológicas Ángel Ganivet, 2003.
Freud, S. “Lo siniestro.” En Obras completas, vol. XVII. Buenos Aires:
Amorrortu, 1976.
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1916.
Goytisolo, J. “Metáforas de la inmigración.” El País, 24 de septiembre,
2004. Acceso 8 abril, 2016.
http://elpais.com/diario/2004/09/24/opinion/1095976806_850215.html.
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discours. Bruselas: Mardaga, 1995.
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problemáticas en estudios culturales, editado por S. Hall, 420-445.
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fraseología: las locuciones expresivas francesas y españolas.”
Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios 32 (2006).
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inmigración.” En Imágenes del otro: identidad e inmigración en la
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Biblioteca Nueva, 2010.
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París: CNRS Editions, 2003.
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Western Culture. New York: Routledge, 1999.
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Universidad de Granada, 2000.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Luis Javier Conejero Magro

Antonio Rivero Machina
Gustavo Adolfo Rodríguez Martín
Paula Schintu Martínez
Christophe Emmanuel Séka
Luis J. Tosina Fernández

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Stylistics in Use

Pablo Ruano San Segundo

Edited by Pablo Ruano San Segundo and Guadalupe Nieto Caballero

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2016 by Pablo Ruano San Segundo,

ISBN (10): 1-4438-9440-0

List of Figures............................................................................................ vii

List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 29

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 47

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 61

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 79

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 99

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 115

Contributors ............................................................................................. 133

Figure 1-1. Results from the British National Corpus ................................. 5

Stylistics in Use is composed of a series of studies about various trends in

Pablo Ruano San Segundo

GUSTAVO A. RODRÍGUEZ MARTÍN

2. Corpus Data: An Overview

described in terms of its composition and, hence, its scope.

2.1. British National Corpus (BNC)

Figure 1-1. Results from the British National Corpus

2.2. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

Figure 1-2. Results from the Corpus of Contemporary American

2.3. Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)

rare, if not practically obsolete, in contemporary language. In addition, the

Figure 1-3. Examples of “but me no buts” in the Corpus of Historical

2.4. Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE)

available on their website states, “the web pages were collected in

Ivanhoe—it is in fact the same example that Bartlett records (see

2.5. Google Books Corpus

Figure 1-4. Results from the Google Books Corpus

Nevertheless, all the examples have two characteristics in common

Figure 1-5. Spelling discrepancies for the same search terms

The second caveat has to do with the large quantity of redundant

the results include five different editions of Gaskell’s Compendium of

sharp literary/scholarly slant in the distribution and use of the examples,

Figure 1-7. Contextual menu for the concordance line “Clerk me no

3. What Corpora Can’t See

Nevertheless, this “mismatch” should not make specific frames be

“boot me no boots,” a slogan to advertise footwear or “bass me no bass,” a

Phraseology. An interdisciplinary conference. (Phraséologie 2005. La

Appendix A - Instances of the “* me no *s” phrase frame

EXAMPLE WORK AUTHOR LIST

Virgin me no A New Way to Pay Philip Bartlett

Vow me no vows. Wit without Money John Fletcher* Bartlett

Typhon me no Soliman and Thomas Kyd Cooper

* Bartlett and Potter erroneously attribute these plays to Beaumont and

THE VULGAR ON STAGE:

PAULA SCHINTU MARTÍNEZ

2. On the Notion of Enregisterment:

to specific linguistic varieties undergoes three necessary stages: a given set

reference to a certain variety as a distinct and unique register either

3. 18th-century England and the Underworld:

vagrancy and criminality caused by the burgeoning number of rogues and

Now it is the general complaint of the taverns, the coffee-houses, the

The preponderance of criminality in the period led to a growing feeling

about the underworld and its practices (But 2011 “Unconventional