Tales About the Fox Among the Tapiete of the Gran Chaco: Rhetorical Strategies in Oral Narratives

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze oral tales of the fox in Tapiete (Tupi-Guarani) language as a cultural and linguistic creative practice, in a context in which this indigenous group is undergoing processes of language shift in favor of Spanish. In order to contribute to the study of common discursive patterns among the languages of the Gran Chaco, grammatical, stylistic and (meta)pragmatic resources recurrent in these tales are examined within the framework of concrete speech events, from a linguistic anthropological theoretical perspective. The analysis is based on data documented in audiovisual format during longterm field research undertaken in Tapiete communities in Argentina and Bolivia between 2004 and 2019.