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The Language of the Canek Manuscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

William F. Hanks
William F. Hanks
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
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Abstract

The Canek manuscript is written in a distinctive linguistic style, probably a local variant of Spanish influenced by Yucatec Maya and archaic forms of Spanish. It also reflects a curiously ambivalent perspective on the Itza king Canek, at once aligning him with the pagan Indians and suggesting an affinity with Saint Francis. Like many other colonial texts, the four extant folia of this manuscript show a blending of verbal genres. This paper presents a discourse analysis of the manuscript, demonstrating that it is organized according to a systematic rhetorical structure based on syntactic foregrounding, poetic parallelism and thematic development. Placed in the context of other colonial documents, this one displays the cultural and linguistic ambivalence of its author.

Type
Special Section: The Canek Manuscript
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 1992 , pp. 269 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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