The Mexican albur in ethnopragmatic perspective

Abstract

The article aims to provide a semantic explication of the Mexican albur, a fight of words, and the discursive practices that it involves. Albur is described here as a cultural phenomenon, a social practice, a speech act, and a linguistic behaviour. Traditional theories of humour are considered inadequate for its description (they are characterised by a multiplicity of categories, vague criteria, and excessive descriptiveness). The author proposes to use the ethnopragmatic approach, with its cultural scripts, i.e. cultural norms, attitudes and background knowledge, common to a given community and reflected in language.