Swearing and Cursing in San Juan Quiahije Chatino

Abstract

Building on the work of Joel Sherzer, this article explores the ways in which a woman creates verbal art in Chatino by narrating a false accusation against her. The narrative contains parallelism, repetition, and narrative manipulations through which verbal art is created (Sherzer 2002 ). The narrator, Celia, is a woman who has an amazing capacity to argue and curse in Chatino, which has repercussions for her in the community. She demonstrates the arts of swearing, cursing, and humor in this narrative. I show that swearing and cursing share interesting structural features with ritual speech and political oratory (H. Cruz 2014, 2017).