MA Thesis/Tesina de maestría by Mariel M Acosta Matos
MA thesis / Tesina de maestría
Publications by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, 2018
This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the suffixes -@, -x, -e and other orthographic innova... more This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the suffixes -@, -x, -e and other orthographic innovations as transgressions to the genderedness of Spanish language. First I discuss the grammatical rules of expressing gender in Spanish and a summary of the ongoing debates concerning linguistic sexism and androcentrism in Spanish language. Then I present some examples of the gender neutral suffixes drawn from articles found in 3 “Do It Yourself” journals published online by three anarchist collectives in Latin America.
GLAD! Revue sur le langage, le genre, les sexualités, 2018
Ernesto Cuba interviewe Mariel Acosta au sujet des résultats de son mémoire de master, qui traite... more Ernesto Cuba interviewe Mariel Acosta au sujet des résultats de son mémoire de master, qui traite des propositions de morphèmes de genre inclusif dans des publications anarchistes de langue espagnole, parmi lesquelles le @, le x et d’autres innovations orthographiques cherchant à contrecarrer le biais androcentré de la langue.
![Research paper thumbnail of [2016] Agitando lo cotidiano. Una conversación sobre el desafío Ⓐnarquista frente al sexismo en el lenguaje](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/50809923/thumbnails/1.jpg)
LL Journal , 2016
Resumen: Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría... more Resumen: Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría, que aborda las propuestas de morfemas de género inclusivo en publicaciones anarquistas de habla hispana, entre las que se halla el uso de " @ " , " x " y otras innovaciones ortográficas que buscan desafiar el sesgo androcéntrico de la lengua.
Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.
Abstract: Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use of "@", "x" and other orthographic innovations that seek to challenge the androcentric bias of language.
Keywords: Non-sexist language; anarchism; orthography; sociolinguistics; Language and gender studies; Spanish.
Juan Pablo Duarte: The Humanist / Juan Pablo Duarte: El humanista
Juan Pablo Duarte: The Humanist / Juan Pablo Duarte: El humanista is a pioneering book. It is the... more Juan Pablo Duarte: The Humanist / Juan Pablo Duarte: El humanista is a pioneering book. It is the first bilingual (Spanish and English) book containing the writings of Juan Pablo Duarte, the founding father of the Dominican Republic. With this selection we seek to expose part of Duarte’s thought as he expressed it at key moments in his life. The book also contains lesson plans designed for middle school and high school English, humanities, history and social studies classes.
Editors: Rhina P. Espaillat & Sarah Aponte
Contributors/Translators: Mariel Acosta, Rhina P. Espaillat, Sherill-Marie Henríquez, Antonio Pérez, Nelson Santana & Martin Toomajian
Invited Talks by Mariel M Acosta Matos
This is a paper on the circulation of anarchists and anarchist ideas in the Dominican Republic in... more This is a paper on the circulation of anarchists and anarchist ideas in the Dominican Republic in the late XIX century and first quarter of the XX century. It was presented at Anarquismo Latinoamericano: 20th Century Anarchist Organizing in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic at Wesleyan University in 2016. The paper is part of an ongoing project and more primary sources remained to be analyzed and included.
Panel: ANARQUISMO LATINAMERICANO: 20th Century Anarchist Organizing in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
A presentation that explores the permeation of anarchist ideas in the Dominican Republic and thei... more A presentation that explores the permeation of anarchist ideas in the Dominican Republic and their adoption by some sectors of the working class and by intellectuals, as it is reflected in their discourses and actions.
Conference Presentations by Mariel M Acosta Matos
![Research paper thumbnail of [2018] Hashtagging sexism in Twitter: The (non)feminist use of #Onvre](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
Onvre - a transgressive variation of hombre (man) - is a neologism that appeared in Spanish-speak... more Onvre - a transgressive variation of hombre (man) - is a neologism that appeared in Spanish-speaking websites a few years ago. Self-identified feminist internet users employ it to mock cisgender, heterosexual men who they perceive as sexist. In this sense, onvre is an orthographic innovation to contest hegemonic, heteronormative masculinities (Sebba 2007). In this presentation, we will focus on the usage of #onvre in Twitter. We seek to identify the different social values assigned to this word, paying attention to the indexical work at play (Eckert 2008; Ochs 1992). Our analysis tries to balance both quantitative and qualitative evidence (Zappavigna 2012). Our corpus consists of tweets collected using Python Programming Language and it gathers the multiple orthographic variations of this neologism in order to establish the most relevant variant. Furthermore, we will outline the semantic regularities in the use of this hashtag looking at the dynamics of style and stance (Irvine 2001; Jaffe 2009). Our argument is that #onvre resists to be fixed to a single meaning or function because Twitter -as other social media- is technically accessible to everybody. Hence authorship cannot be exclusive of a community of practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992), but such innovative word can index multiple, contradictory meanings associated with diverse (and antagonistic) social groups. Finally, we want to position our findings in a larger debate about sexual harassment, cyberbullying and grassroots feminisms.
This paper analyses how anarchists subvert the grammatical norms of standard Spanish by creating ... more This paper analyses how anarchists subvert the grammatical norms of standard Spanish by creating constituents with neutral grammatical gender markers, in order to eliminate the binary gender morphology. Anarchists use what I call Graphic Alternatives to Grammatical Gender (GAGG)—that include the graphic symbols: ‘@’, the slash and the letters ‘x’ and ‘e’. These substitute the normative morphological gender markers –a (fem) and –o (masc), turning compañeras and compañeros into compañerxs, compañer@s, etc. The corpus of GAGG was drawn from articles in contemporary self-published (DIY) journals by Spanish-speaking anarchist collectives from three Latin American countries.
In this paper I argue that by using GAGG in written discourse anarchists’ are engaging in positive and negative identity practices (Bucholtz 1999). Positive identity practices are enacted when anarchists use GAGG to construct non-mainstream identities and, at the same time, to reflect compañerismo or solidarity between the anarchist(s) who wrote the text with those who read them—compañerxs, nosotrxs. Negative identity practices emerge when anarchists use normative grammatical gender forms to refer to contending entities (police officers, lawyers, bosses), therefore distancing themselves from them—los abogados, el sereno.
These GAGG can be described as the linguistic realization of non-binary biological sex and gender identifications in written discourse. By using GAGG, Spanish-speaking anarchists transgress linguistic norms of SS and adopt existing or produce new ways of expressing gender in a non-binary way, constituting a “micro-level language planning” (Liddicoat and Baldauf 2008) practice towards “anti-sexism” (Abbou 2011) in language. This alteration of language for sociopolitical purposes represents part of anarchists’ prefigurative politics or the practice of enacting (in the present) the kind of society they envision for the future. Through their overall praxis of challenging and transforming gender roles, anarchists prefigure a more egalitarian society.
Workshop co-presented with Pablo A., and Court W. at the 8th Annual NYC Anarchist Bookfair.
In t... more Workshop co-presented with Pablo A., and Court W. at the 8th Annual NYC Anarchist Bookfair.
In this panel we will present: 1) an overview of the various anarchist currents in Latin American countries; 2) a brief history of the permeation of anarchist ideas and practices in the Dominican Republic and the current state of Dominican anarchism, and 3) the development of the anarchist movement in Chile, its challenges, problems and achievements.
Co-authored and co-presented with Lluvia Camacho:
In this paper we analyze the existential and... more Co-authored and co-presented with Lluvia Camacho:
In this paper we analyze the existential and locative predicates in Amuzgo, an indigenous language from Xochistlahuaca in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Existentials are verbs that express the existence of a subject or pivot, and also introduce the subject in the discourse. Locatives are verbs that express the position of the subject and/or spatial relation between objects.
Posters by Mariel M Acosta Matos
![Research paper thumbnail of [2015] Against the Norms: Grammatical Gender Subversions in Spanish Language Anarchist Journals](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/38485444/thumbnails/1.jpg)
This project analyses how anarchists subvert the grammatical norms of standard Spanish language t... more This project analyses how anarchists subvert the grammatical norms of standard Spanish language to eliminate the binary gender morphology, by examining articles in contemporary self-published or DIY (Do-It-Yourself) journals from five anarchist collectives from Latin America and Spain. They often use what I call Graphic Alternatives to Grammatical Gender (GAGG), which include the graphic symbols: anarchist circle-A Ⓐ, the @ symbol, and the letters x and e. These symbols and letters substitute the normative morphological gender markers –a (fem) and –o (masc), turning compañeras (fem) and compañeros (masc) into compañerxs, compañer@s, etc. and are also used to avoid the use of the masculine form as generic. In this sense, these GAGG can be described as manifestations of non-binary sex and gender identifications in written discourse. These uses of GAGG constitute a micro-level language planning practice towards combating linguistic sexism. This alteration of language for sociopolitical purposes represents part of anarchists’ prefigurative politics or the practice of enacting (in the present) the kind of society they envision for the future. Through their overall praxis of challenging and transforming gender roles, anarchists prefigure a more equal society in terms of sexual and gender identities.
![Research paper thumbnail of [2011] The Discursive Construction of Style Among New York City Punks](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/74146135/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Punk is a musical and cultural movement that roughly started between the late 1960s and early 197... more Punk is a musical and cultural movement that roughly started between the late 1960s and early 1970s. As stated by O’Hara, “time and birthplace of Punk Rock is debatable…” (24), for there are claims that the Punk movement began in the Great Britain, and in the United States. However, it is agreed among ‘punk historians’ that Punk started off as the movement of an “underprivileged working-class white youth” (O’Hara, 27). Similarly, Hebdige states “Punk claimed to speak for the neglected constituency of white lumpen youth… ‘rendering’ working classness metaphorically in chains and hollow cheeks, ‘dirty’ clothing (stained jackets, tarty see-through blouses) and rough and ready diction” (63).
Nowadays, the Punk community at large is not only comprised by working-class youth that seek to overcome societal pressures and to channel their anger and frustration through music and style, “as punk is now comprised of a clear majority of middle and service class whites… instead of inner city working class whites or minorities, an important action has been to reject their own privilege places in society” (O’Hara, 40). How and why do middle-class whites index an identity that conflicts with their “master identity” (Tracy, 2002)—white, middle class, college educated—are the questions I intend to address in this paper. Moreover, how Punks “create and publish an identity through (self)-labeling” (Duck & McMahan, 2010) through linguistic practices (mainly lexical choices) will also be addressed. Furthermore, the New York City Punk subculture will be the reference group from which I will attempt to answer these questions.
As a subculture, Punk embodies subversion to normalcy and the normative and expected social behavior of the mainstream society. Ideologies and practices associated to punk subculture or ‘punk ideologies’—resistance, non-conformism, anti-establishment—are communicated through verbal and visual language. Language and style, along with other salient features, give meaning to the punk identity. Speech styles and lexical choices can emphasize aspects of identity and carry social meaning, thus Punk style can be seen a communicative practice.
Regarding fashion (style), Georg Simmel states that it “is a product of class distinction and operates like a number of other forms… the number of which consists in revolving within a given circle and at the same time emphasizing it as separate from others” (544). Simmel’s statement, if applied to linguistic practices, applies to “self-othering” characteristic of Punk style that is at the same time the unifying force between the members of the group. In other words, at the same time punks construct and negotiate style—as a means of creating the group’s identity—their linguistic practices assign them to an opposing position (counter culture) in relation to the mainstream society.
The data consists of academic texts, accounts and interviews found in DIY (Do-it-yourself) productions such as fanzines, as well as lyrics, and documentary films that have been analyzed to identify and code linguistic practices indexical of Punk identity and style, as well as punks’ attitudes towards the hegemonic section of society.
Online Publications (Not Academic) by Mariel M Acosta Matos
English translation of Jose Saravia's article of the documentary "Una Parte..." he directed with ... more English translation of Jose Saravia's article of the documentary "Una Parte..." he directed with the collaboration of Benjamin Herrera and Fito Pereira. Una Parte is an extensive compilation of interviews, testimonies, and stories of punks from the province of San Miguel de Tucumán, located northwest of Argentina. In the documentary, Saravia presents a great variety of pictures and footage from shows, and images of zine covers from Tucumán and the rest of Argentina. This “mega proto-documentary” is divided in 4 chapters. The first chapter talks about the punk movement in Tucumán in the ’80s, the second and third ones discuss the movement in the ’90s, and the fourth one focuses on the fanzine movement.
Papers by Mariel M Acosta Matos
In the last few decades, particularly after social movements in the 1970s, new ways to mark gramm... more In the last few decades, particularly after social movements in the 1970s, new ways to mark grammatical gender in the Spanish language have emerged to challenge the normative ones. This essay is an initial effort to describe and analyze the ways anarchists subvert the grammatical norms of standard Spanish in written language in their publications. Anarchists eliminate the common morphemes that mark grammatical gender (-a and –o) in Spanish and substitute them with what I, for now, call Graphic Alternatives to Grammatical Gender (GAGG), the graphic symbols: @, /, = and the letters -x and –e, turning words like compañeras (fem) and compañeros (masc) into compañerxs, compañer@s, etc., creating expressions with neutral or ambiguous grammatical-gender markers that are used with the purpose of eliminating the binary gender morphology. Examples of the GAGG were drawn from articles in the anarchist contemporary self-published (Do It Yourself) journals Acción Directa (Perú), Organización Obr...
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MA Thesis/Tesina de maestría by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Publications by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.
Abstract: Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use of "@", "x" and other orthographic innovations that seek to challenge the androcentric bias of language.
Keywords: Non-sexist language; anarchism; orthography; sociolinguistics; Language and gender studies; Spanish.
Editors: Rhina P. Espaillat & Sarah Aponte
Contributors/Translators: Mariel Acosta, Rhina P. Espaillat, Sherill-Marie Henríquez, Antonio Pérez, Nelson Santana & Martin Toomajian
Invited Talks by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Conference Presentations by Mariel M Acosta Matos
In this paper I argue that by using GAGG in written discourse anarchists’ are engaging in positive and negative identity practices (Bucholtz 1999). Positive identity practices are enacted when anarchists use GAGG to construct non-mainstream identities and, at the same time, to reflect compañerismo or solidarity between the anarchist(s) who wrote the text with those who read them—compañerxs, nosotrxs. Negative identity practices emerge when anarchists use normative grammatical gender forms to refer to contending entities (police officers, lawyers, bosses), therefore distancing themselves from them—los abogados, el sereno.
These GAGG can be described as the linguistic realization of non-binary biological sex and gender identifications in written discourse. By using GAGG, Spanish-speaking anarchists transgress linguistic norms of SS and adopt existing or produce new ways of expressing gender in a non-binary way, constituting a “micro-level language planning” (Liddicoat and Baldauf 2008) practice towards “anti-sexism” (Abbou 2011) in language. This alteration of language for sociopolitical purposes represents part of anarchists’ prefigurative politics or the practice of enacting (in the present) the kind of society they envision for the future. Through their overall praxis of challenging and transforming gender roles, anarchists prefigure a more egalitarian society.
In this panel we will present: 1) an overview of the various anarchist currents in Latin American countries; 2) a brief history of the permeation of anarchist ideas and practices in the Dominican Republic and the current state of Dominican anarchism, and 3) the development of the anarchist movement in Chile, its challenges, problems and achievements.
In this paper we analyze the existential and locative predicates in Amuzgo, an indigenous language from Xochistlahuaca in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Existentials are verbs that express the existence of a subject or pivot, and also introduce the subject in the discourse. Locatives are verbs that express the position of the subject and/or spatial relation between objects.
Posters by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Nowadays, the Punk community at large is not only comprised by working-class youth that seek to overcome societal pressures and to channel their anger and frustration through music and style, “as punk is now comprised of a clear majority of middle and service class whites… instead of inner city working class whites or minorities, an important action has been to reject their own privilege places in society” (O’Hara, 40). How and why do middle-class whites index an identity that conflicts with their “master identity” (Tracy, 2002)—white, middle class, college educated—are the questions I intend to address in this paper. Moreover, how Punks “create and publish an identity through (self)-labeling” (Duck & McMahan, 2010) through linguistic practices (mainly lexical choices) will also be addressed. Furthermore, the New York City Punk subculture will be the reference group from which I will attempt to answer these questions.
As a subculture, Punk embodies subversion to normalcy and the normative and expected social behavior of the mainstream society. Ideologies and practices associated to punk subculture or ‘punk ideologies’—resistance, non-conformism, anti-establishment—are communicated through verbal and visual language. Language and style, along with other salient features, give meaning to the punk identity. Speech styles and lexical choices can emphasize aspects of identity and carry social meaning, thus Punk style can be seen a communicative practice.
Regarding fashion (style), Georg Simmel states that it “is a product of class distinction and operates like a number of other forms… the number of which consists in revolving within a given circle and at the same time emphasizing it as separate from others” (544). Simmel’s statement, if applied to linguistic practices, applies to “self-othering” characteristic of Punk style that is at the same time the unifying force between the members of the group. In other words, at the same time punks construct and negotiate style—as a means of creating the group’s identity—their linguistic practices assign them to an opposing position (counter culture) in relation to the mainstream society.
The data consists of academic texts, accounts and interviews found in DIY (Do-it-yourself) productions such as fanzines, as well as lyrics, and documentary films that have been analyzed to identify and code linguistic practices indexical of Punk identity and style, as well as punks’ attitudes towards the hegemonic section of society.
Online Publications (Not Academic) by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Papers by Mariel M Acosta Matos
Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.
Abstract: Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use of "@", "x" and other orthographic innovations that seek to challenge the androcentric bias of language.
Keywords: Non-sexist language; anarchism; orthography; sociolinguistics; Language and gender studies; Spanish.
Editors: Rhina P. Espaillat & Sarah Aponte
Contributors/Translators: Mariel Acosta, Rhina P. Espaillat, Sherill-Marie Henríquez, Antonio Pérez, Nelson Santana & Martin Toomajian
In this paper I argue that by using GAGG in written discourse anarchists’ are engaging in positive and negative identity practices (Bucholtz 1999). Positive identity practices are enacted when anarchists use GAGG to construct non-mainstream identities and, at the same time, to reflect compañerismo or solidarity between the anarchist(s) who wrote the text with those who read them—compañerxs, nosotrxs. Negative identity practices emerge when anarchists use normative grammatical gender forms to refer to contending entities (police officers, lawyers, bosses), therefore distancing themselves from them—los abogados, el sereno.
These GAGG can be described as the linguistic realization of non-binary biological sex and gender identifications in written discourse. By using GAGG, Spanish-speaking anarchists transgress linguistic norms of SS and adopt existing or produce new ways of expressing gender in a non-binary way, constituting a “micro-level language planning” (Liddicoat and Baldauf 2008) practice towards “anti-sexism” (Abbou 2011) in language. This alteration of language for sociopolitical purposes represents part of anarchists’ prefigurative politics or the practice of enacting (in the present) the kind of society they envision for the future. Through their overall praxis of challenging and transforming gender roles, anarchists prefigure a more egalitarian society.
In this panel we will present: 1) an overview of the various anarchist currents in Latin American countries; 2) a brief history of the permeation of anarchist ideas and practices in the Dominican Republic and the current state of Dominican anarchism, and 3) the development of the anarchist movement in Chile, its challenges, problems and achievements.
In this paper we analyze the existential and locative predicates in Amuzgo, an indigenous language from Xochistlahuaca in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Existentials are verbs that express the existence of a subject or pivot, and also introduce the subject in the discourse. Locatives are verbs that express the position of the subject and/or spatial relation between objects.
Nowadays, the Punk community at large is not only comprised by working-class youth that seek to overcome societal pressures and to channel their anger and frustration through music and style, “as punk is now comprised of a clear majority of middle and service class whites… instead of inner city working class whites or minorities, an important action has been to reject their own privilege places in society” (O’Hara, 40). How and why do middle-class whites index an identity that conflicts with their “master identity” (Tracy, 2002)—white, middle class, college educated—are the questions I intend to address in this paper. Moreover, how Punks “create and publish an identity through (self)-labeling” (Duck & McMahan, 2010) through linguistic practices (mainly lexical choices) will also be addressed. Furthermore, the New York City Punk subculture will be the reference group from which I will attempt to answer these questions.
As a subculture, Punk embodies subversion to normalcy and the normative and expected social behavior of the mainstream society. Ideologies and practices associated to punk subculture or ‘punk ideologies’—resistance, non-conformism, anti-establishment—are communicated through verbal and visual language. Language and style, along with other salient features, give meaning to the punk identity. Speech styles and lexical choices can emphasize aspects of identity and carry social meaning, thus Punk style can be seen a communicative practice.
Regarding fashion (style), Georg Simmel states that it “is a product of class distinction and operates like a number of other forms… the number of which consists in revolving within a given circle and at the same time emphasizing it as separate from others” (544). Simmel’s statement, if applied to linguistic practices, applies to “self-othering” characteristic of Punk style that is at the same time the unifying force between the members of the group. In other words, at the same time punks construct and negotiate style—as a means of creating the group’s identity—their linguistic practices assign them to an opposing position (counter culture) in relation to the mainstream society.
The data consists of academic texts, accounts and interviews found in DIY (Do-it-yourself) productions such as fanzines, as well as lyrics, and documentary films that have been analyzed to identify and code linguistic practices indexical of Punk identity and style, as well as punks’ attitudes towards the hegemonic section of society.