National Identity and Its Linguistic Representation in the Mexican Linguocultural Space

Abstract

This article studies the linguistic representation of identity in the Mexican linguocultural space. The aim of the paper is to deduce the manifestations of national identity of Mexicans in their language and linguoculture. The relevance of this research stems from the need to study the national identity of Mexicans as representatives of the largest Spanish-speaking country. Of no less importance in the era of globalization is the analysis of the representation of identity, whose process of formation is used to control the consciousness of modern society and as a key element in state policy, contributing to a country’s stable growth and development. The article points out that Mexican Spanish has pan-Hispanic, pan-American, zonal, and nation-specific features. It has a tendency towards originality, represented by phonetic, grammatical, and lexicosemantic features. Mexican identity is most vividly manifested in vocabulary and phraseology. One of the main features of Mexican Spanish vocabulary is archaisms. Numerous borrowings from the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, or indigenisms, testify to the importance of this component in the Mexican linguistic worldview and serve as markers of national identity. This identity is manifested in precedent names, which refer us to the images of indigenous cultures of ancient civilizations, as well as in the names of characters popular in the Mexican cultural space. One of the components of the representation of Mexican identity in the language is paroemia. The author concludes that archaisms, indigenisms, anthroponyms, precedent names, and proverbs of Mexican Spanish have “absorbed” the history of the Mexican people and reflect the specific linguistic worldview of Mexicans.