Variación léxico-semántica en las categorías referentes al sur de Bariloche: una aproximación desde la sociolingüística cognitiva

Abstract

We investigate the lexical-semantic variation concerning three expressions that refer to the same section of San Carlos de Bariloche city (EL SUR, PAMPA DE HUENULEO and EL ALTO), while focusing on the incidence of extralinguistic factors. The three variants designate an area that has occupied a socially and politically neglected place in the history of the city (Matossian, 2011). The contextualization of the study object reveals that the use of the expressions involves semantic phenomena (both denotational and connotational), which engage with the characteristics of a specific socio-territorial reality. We subscribe to the cognitive sociolinguistics approach (Geeraerts, Kristiansen, & Peirsman, 2010; Moreno Fernández, 2012; Pizarro Pedraza, 2014), which combines sociolinguistics empirical solidity, with the theoretical principles of cognitive linguistics by which language is defined as a system of knowledge embodied in human experience. We also incorporate the ecolinguistics theoretical approach (Couto, 2018; Zhou, 2021), which stresses the importance of including aspects of the natural, mental and social environment in the analysis of linguistic phenomena. We follow Geeraerts (2010) analytical model, based on the prototype theory (Rosch, 1978), which establishes different types of lexical-semantic variation (semasiological variation, formal onomasiological variation and conceptual onomasiological variation): this model also includes cognitive, social and contextual aspects as fundamental parts of the analysis. In order to detect the types of variation that operate, as well as the relevant external factors, we constitute a corpus using two empirical sources: digital newspapers from Bariloche and interviews with local speakers. The most important cases of variation are related to the communicative situation (newspapers versus interviews) and to the area of the city inhabited by each speaker.