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The Zapatista Linguistic Revolution: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis

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Discourses from Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This chapter investigates the claim that the Zapatista discourse transformed Latin American guerrilla language. Through Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies, the Zapatista communiqués are compared with a reference corpus composed of previous guerrilla discourses. Although the Zapatistas abandon vocabulary associated with Marxism, findings show that several tropes and motifs of traditional guerrilla discourse are still mobilised by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. These elements, nevertheless, are sometimes rebranded or used exclusively to dialogue with other leftist organisations. In addition, a significant rupture is found in the Zapatistas’ emphasis on orality, manifested through slang, neologisms, and uncharacteristically frequent references to speech acts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    After the short initial armed uprising, the EZLN did not take the arms again.

  2. 2.

    The last communiqué included in the Zapatista Corpus dates from 13 April 2016.

  3. 3.

    The oldest communiqué in the archive dates from 10 March 1952, and the last communiqués included in the Reference Corpus date from 25 February 2017.

  4. 4.

    http://www.cedema.org/.

  5. 5.

    The code makes use of the Python libraries NLTK (Bird, Klein, & Loper, 2009) and SciPy (Jones et al., 2001). The desire to control what is happening behind the scene led to the decision to write the code instead of using pre-existing software. In addition, to the best of my knowledge, some of the queries used in this investigation, for example, key-collocations , cannot be made in a straightforward way with publicly available corpus linguistics software such as AntConc and WordSmith Tools. Transparency regarding formulas, significance thresholds, and statistical tests used ensures reproducibility. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Julius Jonušas for his considerable help towards writing the code.

  6. 6.

    About indigenous storytellers in Chiapas, Gossen (1999) writes: “The storytellers themselves wrote in a style that is closely linked to the conventions of oral performance, for all had reached adolescence or adulthood as monolingual Tzotzil speakers; they knew none other than the oral style” (p. 33). For more information on Maya storytelling in Chiapas and its importance today, see Gossen (1974, 1999).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Modern Languages, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK

    Isabelle Gribomont

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  1. Isabelle Gribomont
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Correspondence to Isabelle Gribomont .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

    Eleonora Esposito

  2. Language Department, Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago, Chile

    Carolina Pérez-Arredondo

  3. Merlin Research, Santiago, Chile

    José Manuel Ferreiro

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Gribomont, I. (2019). The Zapatista Linguistic Revolution: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis. In: Esposito, E., Pérez-Arredondo, C., Ferreiro, J. (eds) Discourses from Latin America and the Caribbean. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93623-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93623-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93622-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93623-9

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