SOURCE: “Language as a Barrier to Communication Between the Classes in Rosario Castellanos's ‘La tregua’ and José Revueltas's ‘El lenguaje de nadie,’” in Hispania, Vol. 74, No. 4, December, 1991, pp. 868-75.

In the following essay, Duncan examines language used as an instrument of oppression by middle- and upper-class Spanish-speaking Mexicans against native Mexicans in Castellanos's “La tregua” and José Revueltas's “El lenguaje de nadie.”

Language is normally perceived to be a vehicle that facilitates communication rather than impedes it. Yet, when cultural, social, and economic barriers exist between two or more interlocutors, attempts at communication often fail, and language becomes a useless, empty vessel which neither contains nor carries real meaning. In Mexico, for example, where an unbridgeable gulf separates the working class from the bourgeoisie, an Indian peasant may find that his words do not possess the same significance as those of a wealthy, land-owning white, even when he...