Lunfardo and gendered discourse: creation and analysis of a linguistic corpus of tango lyrics
dc.contributor.advisor
Macintyre, Iona
en
dc.contributor.advisor
Mackintosh, Fiona
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dc.contributor.author
Newton-Bruzza, Elaine Renee
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dc.date.accessioned
2020-10-02T19:18:39Z
dc.date.available
2020-10-02T19:18:39Z
dc.date.issued
2020-07-29
dc.description.abstract
This thesis explores the question of how language is used to construct gender
in tango lyrics, and it specifically examines lunfardo cultural markers and explores the
ways in which these contribute to gendered discourse in the texts. The purpose of this
research is twofold: (1) to create the first ever linguistic corpus of tango lyrics, thereby
generating a resource that will stimulate further investigation into this topic, and (2) to
analyze the relationship between specific gender-related lunfardo terms and discourse
prosodies as identified via a corpus linguistics-based analysis of the texts. The linguistic
variety lunfardo has been intrinsically linked with tango from its inception and
constitutes the distinctive linguistic feature of the texts. This interdisciplinary study
investigates how the use of lunfardo vocabulary provides a type of linguistic
scaffolding upon which the cultural construction of gender is erected in tango lyrics.
Through the creation of the first linguistic corpus of tango lyrics utilizing Sketch
Engine (Kilgarriff and Rychlý) and the analysis of selected terms and their collocates,
gendered discourse prosodies are identified in the lyrics and quantified. The data from
this research establishes that the effects of linguistic variety (i.e. lunfardo and standard
Spanish) and gendered terms in the corpus have a statistically significant impact on the
creation of discourse prosodies, and reveals unforeseen ways in which lunfardo is
preeminent in the construction of gendered discourse in tango lyrics. This thesis then
employs a data-driven approach to facilitate and strengthen an analysis of pragmatic
and rhetorical elements in representative lyrics through close readings of those texts,
presenting evidence for the gendered discourses derived from both the collocational
relationships and the statistical results.
Through this methodology, this research contributes to an understanding of
lunfardo’s impact on the construction of gendered discourse, and also to a nuanced
understanding of representations of men and women in tango lyrics. By creating this
initial Tango Lyrics Corpus, this research purports to incentivize and facilitate the
development of a comprehensive linguistic corpus of tango lyrics with the goal of
expanding knowledge of this unique cultural form.
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dc.identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/1842/37328
dc.identifier.uri
http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/614
dc.language.iso
en
dc.publisher
The University of Edinburgh
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dc.relation.hasversion
Benzecry Sabá, Gustavo Javier, The Quest for the Embrace: The History of the Tango Dance 1800-1983, translated by Derrick Del Pilar and Elaine Newton-Bruzza, Stuttgart, Abrazos, 2015.
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dc.subject
Lunfardo
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dc.subject
tango
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dc.subject
gender
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dc.subject
corpus
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dc.title
Lunfardo and gendered discourse: creation and analysis of a linguistic corpus of tango lyrics
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dc.type
Thesis or Dissertation
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dc.type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral
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dc.type.qualificationname
PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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