Chapurreau: Breve historia conceptual de una etiqueta lingüística

Abstract

The participle form of the Spanish verb chapurrear ’to speak a language badly‘ is registered in some regions of Spain – Asturias, León, Extremadura, Aragon – as a glossonym through which speakers of minority languages name their mother tongue. This article provides the first academic approach to the conceptual history of chapurreau. By focusing on the example of Ribagorça (Aragon, Northeastern Spain), it is shown that i) the glossonym derives from a verb champurrar ’to debase a liquor‘, attested since the 17th century; and ii) between 1750–1800, the verb acquired a figurative meaning which was spread not only by Spanish central administration – as it was thought–, but also by Catalan writers from the 1840s onward.