The Semantics and Pragmatics of Gringo
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Different cultural backgrounds can lead to the intention of a speaker being misunderstood by a listener. My study aimed to answer the following research questions: Is there a cultural gap in the way the term gringo is perceived? And, more broadly: How does culture affect the way language is perceived and intended? To answer these questions, I began by surveying people in Mexico, the USA, and Spain about how offensive they regarded the word. The results showed that the word by default has a derogatory connotation. However, my personal experiences had shown me that the term had a neutral, and oftentimes positive, connotation. I then proceeded to take a step back and get a sense of what people really thought this word meant. To do this, I used a process called “word association” (asking participants what are five words that come to mind when they think of the word gringo). I surveyed again Spanish, Mexican and American participants, as well as participants from two new groups: Central and South America. The results showed that the majority of people surveyed from Latin America and South America used words related to “geography & language” (e.g., English, US Citizen, American) when describing gringo. This was definitely not as noticeable for Americans and Mexicans, who used more negative or racially loaded words (e.g., offensive, bad, white, blond). Then, I decided to look for instances of the word gringo in the media, in Costa Rican newspapers. The paper concludes that the term gringo is considered in American culture a primarily racial term, and this is not the case for any other countries that participate in the exchange of such.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | December 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Birkner, Nicole |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | Symbolic Systems Program |
|---|---|
| Subject | Department of Linguistics |
| Subject | Slurs |
| Subject | Semantics |
| Subject | Pragmatics |
| Subject | Culture |
| Genre | Thesis |
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University
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- Contact
- nbirkner@alumni.stanford.edu
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