Entre ética e ironía: aspectos retóricos en los “pies de foto” de Juan José Millás.

The aim of this short essay is to analyze the techniques of argumentation developed by the writer and journalist Juan José Millás in his articles named Pie de Foto. Millás is known for his peculiar way of writing, in which language is highly unstable and is thereby apt to the creation of new perspectives and points of view. In the Pie de Foto, this ambivalence of language is enriched by the presence of a picture, of which his textual article is a comment. Using the definition given by Genette, Millás rhetoric is not a ‘restricted’ one but it is a complex system, in which also the apparently superficial figures can provide semantic effects and enrich information. Within this frame, irony plays a fundamental role because it helps questioning the standard discourse of politics. By means of techniques such as the mechanical reproduction and the ridiculing of the fallacies hidden in common sense, Millas raises ethical problems and develops a critique to the postmodern way of life in western countries.

Historiografía, mantenimiento y pérdida de la identidad léxica y cultural: el caso de Gualchos a través de los datos del proyecto Vitalex

This work aims at providing a first approximation to the study of lexical vitality by comparing its results to those of ALEA as well as carrying out a study on the current state of affairs. These results represent our early data collection from location 515 corresponding to Gualchos in La Alpujarra. Here we show a very interesting relationship between the deep socio-economic and demographic transformation of the area and a lexical mutation that is shown by a high percentage of lexical mortality and a loss of dialectal specificity giving rise to a shift towards standard terms, especially in fields related to agricultural and ranching life.