Hidden glossaries in paraguayan literature: The case of La Babosa

Abstract

Literature and lexicography intersect in literary glossaries. These are brief texts, usually discreetly embedded within works, which have contributed to their limited visibility. This work is carried out by the authors or editors themselves, with the aim of providing semantic clarifications on specific lexical units. This article focuses on the analysis of La Babosa, a work written by Gabriel Casaccia (1907–1980), a seminal novel of modern Paraguayan fiction. Published in the second half of the 20th century, the work includes 91 footnotes, in the form of glosses, on the same page where the defined term appears. Using a qualitative, descriptive methodology with a metalexicographic approach, the aim is to identify the function of the glosses, the types of words selected, their semantic fields, the definitions provided, and the strategies employed. Among the main findings, it is noteworthy that most of the glosses correspond to equivalents and translations of Guaraní expressions, although Paraguayanisms, phonetic vulgarisms, indigenous terms, and even proper names are also recorded. The resulting glossary is characterized by its hybrid nature: bilingual (Guaraní-Spanish) and monolingual. The definitions are presented in the form of full or partial equivalents, metalinguistic explanations, and paraphrases. It is concluded that this is an author-compiled glossary with dialectal features, whose primary function is informative, highlighting the situation of linguistic contact in the country.