Texting Amor: Emerging Intimacies in Textually Mediated Romance Among Tzotzil Mayan Youth

Abstract

Cell phones are vehicles for creating and transforming sociality in peer networks (Coleman 2010; Wallis 2010). In the last decade, increased access to cell phones has radically changed courtship practices among Mayan youth of Zinacantán, Chiapas, and México as young couples now text clandestine romantic relationships, unmediated by elders. Since there is essentially no vocabulary for romantic love in Mayan Tzotzil, couples now rely on Spanish expressions gleaned from the media and other sources and have created a genre of romantic texting. The current study analyzes the textual microprocesses of dialogical construction of romance from a database of ten thousand WhatsApp text messages. Both microlevel practices and macrolevel forces are considered in shaping new landscapes of love, showing how texting affords new technological, linguistic, and literacy skills that are significantly changing repertoires of identity (Kroskrity 1993, 2000) and new expressions of agency and affect among Mayan youth. [Youth, cell phones, romance, love, digital communication, literacy, Mayan]

Embodying intimacy in everyday interaction: A biolinguistic study of long‐term partners in the Southeastern United States

“…Merav Shohet's research at the intersection of psychological and linguistic anthropology, for example, has investigated how particular individuals and couples variably engage with such ideals as they navigate “the world of affective ties with others” (2017, 557–58). Linguistic anthropologists, finally, have examined how the interactive and textual co‐construction of intimacy emerges as both a product and producer of cultural meaning (Ahearn, 2001; de León, 2017; Gershon, 2010; Manning, 2015).…”

Entre el mensaje romántico y el etnorock en YouTube: repertorios identitarios en los paisajes virtuales de jóvenes mayas tsotsiles

“…En la primera se combinaron tres métodos: 1) la etnografía de la comunicación en el entorno familiar, 2) entrevistas y cuestionarios a grupos etarios en el hogar y en escuelas secundarias y preparatorias de Zinacantán -cabecera-y de las dos comunidades del estudio, y 3) colección de una base de datos de tres mil mensajes de texto prepagados (entre 2012 y 2014) de diversos grupos etarios entre los 12 y los 45 años. En la segunda fase (2013)(2014)(2015)(2016) se recolectaron 30 000 mensajes de WhatsApp, de los cuales 10 000 fueron analizados en un estudio de caso longitudinal de una pareja (edades 18 y 21) (De León, 2017b). En la tercera fase (2015 a 2017) se construye y se analiza una base de datos creada a partir de los intercambios que aparecen en las páginas en YouTube 9 de grupos musicales -Sak Tzevul, Lumaltok, Slajem K'op, Yibel Jme'tik Banamil-, Facebook y otros sitios de redes sociales de afiliación tsotsil.…”