Mexican Speech Play: History and the Psychological Discourses of Power
Abstract
If one spends time among Mexican descent working-class men of the lower
socioeconomic level either in Mexico or the United States, it is quite
llkely that, subject to the cultural constraints of time and social context,
one may eventually witness the display of expressive performances of
speech play. These displays may general1y be characterized as
metaphorical, often sexual1y and scatological1y charged, exchanges of
ritualized insult. They carry various names, for example, albur,
chingaderas, or puntadas.1 For all its marked recurrence among Mexican
working-class men, such expressive discourse has received almost no
closely analytical ethnographic attention, and no one, as far as I know, has
critical1y discussed these speech forms in relation to the class position of
these men in the larger political economy. In another paper I offer an
ethnographic discussion in these terms based on my fieldwork in southern
Texas (Limón 1985).