“Buenos Días/((Military Salute))”: The Natural History of a Coined Insult

Abstract

In this article, I adopt an interpretive approach to the study of Maya children's peer talk to examine how Maya children's verbal arsenal of types of conflict talk—namely, teasing, shaming, and insulting nicknames—comprise powerful discursive strategies within caregiver and peer practices in the everyday negotiation and co-construction of peer politics and kin group social relationships. I specifically examine how children from 3 different households, members of an extended family network, entextualized a formulaic politeness routine to fight, tease, and shame rival siblings and peers. To illustrate this process, I trace the natural history (i.e., the birth, near death, and subsequent institutionalization) of an improvised insult within shifting kin and peer alliances. In all of these scenarios, sibling and peers' talk-in-interaction reveal how one's clever ways with words include interactional tactics that exploit adult-centric perspectives on who can be heard as a “competent speaker.”

Funding for this ethnographic research was made possible by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. I thank Lourdes de Leon, Amy Kyratzis, Marjorie Goodwin, and Elinor Zucker for providing me with valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article. Special thanks to the families from San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, who have shared their lives with me for the past 16 years.

Notes

Funding for this ethnographic research was made possible by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. I thank Lourdes de Leon, Amy Kyratzis, Marjorie Goodwin, and Elinor Zucker for providing me with valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article. Special thanks to the families from San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, who have shared their lives with me for the past 16 years.

1 There is regional variation as to the degree of offense encoded in this verb. Chingar is very offensive in Mexico, whereas in Guatemala, the pragmatic meanings of chingar are continuously negotiated.