The Processes of Grammaticalization of Mock Impoliteness in European Spanish
doi: https://doi.org/10.31810/rsel.56.1.2
Keywords:
Desemanticisation; mock impoliteness; gender; generationAbstract
Mock impoliteness is a pragmatic phenomenon that, although it involves seemingly impolite acts such as teasing or insults, is interpreted as a form of interpersonal bonding (Ruiz Gurillo, 2024). While it has been widely studied in English, research on this phenomenon in Spanish is scarce and, when there is, none is focused on its functioning in instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp or Discord. Therefore, this investigation aims to analyse samples of spontaneous conversations, taking into account the variables of gender and generation, with the objective of identifying variations in the usage of pragmatic strategies. The findings reveal an emerging semantic shift in which insults such as tonta (‘silly’) or zorra (‘bitch’) lose their negative connotation in contexts of mock impoliteness, for serving to reinforce affective bonds. These expressions are more prevalent in conversations between women, less frequent among men, and tend to be moderated in mixed-gender interactions in order to prevent misunderstandings.
Downloads
References
Albelda Marco, M. & Barros García, M. J. (2013). La cortesía en la comunicación. Arco/Libros.
Alvarado Ortega, M. B. (2016). Descortesía y humor fallido en conversaciones entre hombres y mujeres. Pragmática Sociocultural, 4(2), 243–267. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2016-0005
Bell, N. (2009). Responses to failed humor. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1825–1836. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.10.010
Bernal, M. (2008). Do insults always insult? Genuine impoliteness versus non-genuine impoliteness in colloquial Spanish. Pragmatics, 18(4), 775–802. doi: https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18.4.10ber
Bousfield, D. (2008). Impoliteness in interaction. John Benjamins. doi: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.167
Briz, A. y Pons, S. (2010). Unidades, marcadores discursivos y posición. En Ó. Loureda y E. Acín (eds.), Los estudios sobre marcadores del discurso en español, hoy, (pp. 327-358). Arco/Libros.
Culpeper, J. (1996). Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 25, 349–367. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3
Fuentes Rodríguez, C. (1990). Algunos operadores de función fática. Sociolingüística Andaluza, 5, 137–170.
Gaviño Rodríguez, V. (2011). Operaciones metalingüísticas del marcador discursivo «hombre». Marco ELE, 12, 7. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3708226
Haugh, M. (2010). Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, face. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2106–2119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.018
Haugh, M., & Bousfield, D. (2012). Mock impoliteness in interactions amongst Australian and British speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1099-1114.
Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2002). World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511613463
Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman’s place. Language in Society, 2(1), 45–79. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500000051
Lara Bermejo, V. (2024). La historia de tío como forma de tratamiento coloquial en español. Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española, 19, 47–61. doi: https://doi.org/10.54166/rhle.2024.19.03
Meillet, A. (1912). «L’évolution des formes grammaticales». Linguistique Historique et Linguistique générale. Édouard Champion.
Mills, S. (2005). Gender and impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research, 1, 263–280. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.2.263
Okura, E. (1992). Reexamining the notion of negative face in the Japanese sociolinguistic politeness of request. Multilingua, 11(1), 25–42.
Pons Bordería, S. (1998). Los apelativos oye y mira o los límites de la conexión.
En M.A. Martín Zorraquino & E. Montolío (Eds.), Marcadores discursivos: Teoría y práctica (pp. 213–228). Arco/Libros.
Quintana San José, A. (2025). Corpus sobre la Descortesía (CODES). https://codescorpus.wordpress.com/
Quintana San José, A. (2025a). Eres tonta, te quiero: La descortesía como método de afiliación en el español peninsular. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 141(3), 707-734. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/ZRP-2025-0035
Quintana San José, A. (2025b). El humor sarcástico: Plano oral versus plano escrito. Oralia: Análisis del discurso oral, 28(2), 135-153. doi: https://doi.org/10.25115/oralia.v28i2.10025
RAE-ASALE, & RAE. (s/f). Diccionario de la lengua española. «Diccionario de la lengua española» - Edición del Tricentenario. Recuperado el 5 de enero de 2026, de https://dle.rae.es/
Reyes, G. (1994). La pragmática lingüística. Montesinos
Ruiz Gurillo, L. (2024). Mock impoliteness in Spanish: Evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus. HUMOR, 37(1), 23–45. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2023-0097
Sweetser, E. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620904
Traugott, E. C. (1988). Pragmatic strengthening and grammaticalization. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 14, 406. doi: https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v14i0.1784
Zimmermann, K. (2005). Construcción de la identidad y anticortesía verbal. En D. Bravo (Ed.), Estudios de la (des)cortesía en español (pp. 245–262). Editorial Dunken.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2026 Revista Española de Lingüística
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
