Configuraciones culturales e identitarias en el lenguaje estudiantil de los jóvenes del área técnica de la Universidad de Cuenca: una mirada sociolingüística

Abstract

The present work aims to analyze the student language of the technical area of the University of Cuenca (School of Architecture and Urbanism, Chemical Sciences, Agricultural Sciences and Engineering) by describing a glossary of 248 terms that they use, as well as the mechanisms which have led to the formation of these terms. These lexical-semantic variants that they use make it possible to determine how this social group constructs its identities and sense of belonging. Theoretically, it relies on the postulates of lexicography (to organize the glossary) and sociolinguistics (to analyze the results). It uses a mixed quali-quantitative methodology with probability sampling and uses the structured interview as a technique. As a result, it finds that the created nouns sum up 63% of the terms. It also identifies that 50% of the terms come from technical specialized language, 28% from student language, and 22% from youth language. Regarding semantic figures, it was found that the most frequently used figures were simile, apocopate, metaphor, and sarcasm. Regarding the fields, the largest number of entries are in the student field with 114, followed by the field of subjects with 36 and academic with 33. From these creation processes, students develop a particular code that suits to their communication, expressive, and group identity needs.