Language portrayals in Paraguayan Fiction: A Sociolinguistic Study of the novel Hijo de la Revolución: language identity and ideology

Resumen

The coexistence of two languages (Spanish and Guarani) in Paraguay has been analyzed by many scholars in the field of Sociolinguistics, undergoing different approaches within the discipline applied to specific collected data. However, the analysis of literary works from the point of view of Linguistics is quite scarce. The present paper attempts to study the language used in a recent novel in order to find the portrayal of identity and ideologies of the language (or languages) used in Paraguayan modern literature. The selected work for analysis is a nationally awarded novel in which the author used the different language variations among Paraguay’s population. The research is organized with an introduction to contextualize the study, including a literature review to show what has already been done on the same topic and framework. The next step involves analyzing the collected data; this data is made up of excerpts that showcase different usages of language in the narrative as well as in the character’s speech. After having them grouped by similar features, they were described within the framework. After this, the results were presented showing the different attitudes that the book shows towards both languages (Spanish and Guarani), demonstrating the underlying ideologies towards the speakers of both languages, marked by their origin as well (rural speakers vs. city speakers).  These results show that the portrayal that the author made is accurate but exaggerated, and it depicts how Guarani is still associated with the lower class of the people whereas Spanish is the language of the educated.