Pedro Fernández Riquelme publishes in MIRCo blog the first of the two parts of his article The Murcian Variety and Humor: A Model of Unintelligibility? Riquelme is a professor and researcher at the Universidad de Murcia.
Introduction
In the current work we will discuss the way in which the ditopic Murcian variety is characterized and its stigmatization, beginning with how globophobia manifests in humorous contexts. Our primary sources are mass media and audiovisual fiction, which play a glotopoilitical role in building the public image of linguistic varieties. In this work, I present a small part of the extensive corpus I have compiled to carry out different studies, as the space is limited[1].
Although our object of study does not focus on terminological discussion, we consider it appropriate to designate Murcian as a variety. As we will try to demonstrate in our text, Murcian is not perceived simply as a regional variety, but as a minoritized form, used to construct ignorant, rustic, or marginalized characters (“inferior speaker,” according to Bourdieu, 1985), as a linguistic form with low symbolic capital, that is, with little social legitimacy, and as an identity trait used for mockery, especially in the media, cinema, television, and social networks. This fits precisely with the argument that dialect is not a neutral label, but a category historically used to place a way of speaking “below” the standard.
In Dialectología española, Zamora Vicente describes vulgarisms in transitional speech, as spaces where “vulgar features, simplifications, and popular turns accumulate, which do not manage to constitute their own system but reveal the vitality of the language on its margins” (Zamora Vicente, 1960, p. 45). This quote shows how the author understands the “vulgar” not as pejorative, but as spontaneous and non-normative features that arise in everyday orality. In the case of Murcian, they are usually used in informal situations by educated speakers as part of their geolect.
We’ll take our contemporary post-Franco dictatorship era as our temporal framework. The videoclip of “Murciana Marrana” (Kaka de Luxe, 1980), in the movie Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón represents Murcian as a symbol of vulgarity and degradation, as it says in the chorus: “I love you because you’re dirty, filthy, a whore, and a flatterer, the most obscene in Murcia.” This association between identity and moral devaluation reveals a implicit politics of exclusion. Forty-two years after, in the Spanish tv show Autodefensa (2022), we find this dialogue:
-I’d like to give thanks for living in Barcelona or Cataluña in general, because girl there’s regions in Spain…
–Girl, imagine being from Murcia.
–Yea I was just about to say that.
In other words, the Spanish comic avant-garde in films constructs a negative image of Murcia and of being Murcian, which inevitably extends to the way people express themselves.
Regional humor tends to rely on linguistic differences: accents that are different from the standard, particular phrases and words. In the case of the Murcian variety, spoken in the region of Murcia (southeast Spain), there is a tradition of humor that that makes use of (and reinforces) these peculiarities of speech. However, this relationship is not free of criticism: one of them is that some features of the variety make it difficult to understand (unintelligible) for those who are not familiarized, be it from other regions of Spain or within Murcia itself. This article examens the linguistic foundations of murician, examples of humor that use it, and if the accusation of unintelligibility is justifiable.
A devaluation of the variety comes from within the in-group, due to the mistaken association of “panocho” with the real geolect. The panocho is an comic literary construct created in the late nineteenth century by well-off citizens to satirize the speech of the Murcian countryside (Abad, 2000). In doing so, they exaggerate the accent, invent words, retrieve archaisms, etc. Some associations have promoted it to the point of wanting to include it as a supposed Murcian language, as an identity marker (asociación L’ajuntaera)[2]. Along these lines, the Government of the region of Murcia declared it a BIC (Asset of Cultural Interest) in 2025 where the:
“(…) means of safeguarding the bando panocho, are proposed, for example, to create and promote media campaigns and advertising campaigns for the promotion of knowledge, and dissemination of the bando panocho; to encourage research and best practices, as well as documentation and recording of its manifestation”.
The technical report included in the decree expresses affirmations that reinforce linguistic stereotypes which could contribute to the hierarchization of Murcian among discredited Hispanic varieties, issues on which Jimenéz Cano (2024) reflects on in his most recent work.
Pierre Bourdieu (1985) analyzes the ways in which linguistic practices are shaped by power relationships. The valorization of standard Castilian corresponds to what Bourdieu calls the “linguistic market”, where legitimate ways of speaking are converted into symbolic capital. At the same time, the figure of the “inferior speaker”, is constructed, as Murcian is associated with ignorance, vulgarity, marginality or automatic comic effect. This creates a collective imaginary in which any form of speaking with doesn’t conform to the standard is delegitimized (Blommaert, 2010). In order to judge if it’s reasonable to accuse Murcian of being “unintelligible” in certain humoristic contexts, we must first identify which are the features that distance it from standard Spanish from what many listeners have as reference, to later reflect on the accusation of incomprehensibility.
- Phonetics and Phonology
According to Monroy Casas and Hernández-Campoy, in their article “Murcian Spanish” (2015), Murcian possesses phonetic features that make it very distinct from the pronunciation of standard Castillian. The following are a few examples:
- Loss of final consonants, except for nasals (n): many consonants “forbidden” at the end of the word from the perspective of the Murcian phonological system are deleted.
- Regressive assimilation of consonants in coda position with the following consonants: this can produce germinations (strongly marked doble sounds) which are not familiar for speakers of other dialects. Example: “Es que” → “Ekke”. The final s of “es” becomes k because the next word begins with k. Murcian result: sounds like a long k.
- Substitution de/l/por/r, and viceversa, variations that can produce phonetic confusion for those who are not used to them. Example: “espalda” for “esparda”
- Intonational variant: Murcian has a “flatter” intonation or of a narrow pitch range, which may make certain communicative intentions (irony, emphatic, exclamatory) less evident out of context for non-Murcian listeners.
- Vowel opening. Example: “Los tomates” for “/loh tomateh/[lɔtːɔˈmatɛ] due to the opening, weak aspiration and germination produced by assimilation.
2. Lexicon and Idioms
As with any variety, there is specific vocabulary, local expressions (rural vocabulary, slang, particular diminutives) which are not known outside of the region. In many monologues or parodies about Murcian, local words are used which require contextualization or local knowledge to be understood. There’s not always a glossary or explanation, which can increase the understanding barrier.
Within the region of Murcia, the differences in speech depending on the area (for example, the capital of Murcia versus areas of the Altiplano, the border with Albacete or the coast) are also significative because the phonetics, the accent, and the rhythm change. A non-local listener not only has to adapt to Murcian in general, but also to the speaker’s specific regional variety. This adds complexity.
Now let’s see how these features are used in humor, and how some of these productions allude to Murcian as something “difficult to understand” or laughable precisely because of its exotic linguistic character.
a. Monologues and live comedy
In the show titled “Ocho Apellidos Murcianos” (Eight Murcian Last Names, not to be confused with the movie “Ocho Apellidos Vascos”), Murcian comedians like Kalderas, Javi Chou, Marco and Jaime Caravaca exploit the linguistic Murcian stamp: accent, local words, and characteristic speech patterns. The non-local public may find it funny or may fail to understand parts of it.
Juanjo Albiñana (Manchego, from Castilla-La Mancha) expresses in his live show[3] statements which can reach the point of being offensive, although they highlight the peculiarity of the Murcian variety, reinforcing its perception as a laughable deviation.
- (…) And a Murcian says this to you
- They add fantasy to it…they think they speak in elvish.
- “That shit” sticks to you: beehh, behh, (for “bar”), although the comics exaggerated delivery makes it resemble the sound of a goat.
In interviews with Murcian comics by media outlets like Verne of El País, some admit that “when a reporter comes to Murcia…it seems like they go up to a person and if they understand them, they don’t interview them”.This statement indicates that the stereotype of Murcian is, to a certain point, linguistically “unusual”, “strange” for outsiders[4].
For example, Murcian presenter Xuso Jones was playing ‘they know, they don’t know’ on the ocean boardwalk of Gandia, he approached a passerby to see if he knew how to speak Spanish, he replied yes, but then left him perplexed by saying “you speak Murcian, I have problems when you speak Murcian very quickly” [5]. Xuxo replied to the man saying: “I’m going to try to vocalize very well”.
REFERENCES
Abad, M. (2000). “Las hablas murcianas en la obra de Muñoz Garrigós”. Revista de investigación lingüística, número 2, pp: 9-30. Universidad de Murcia.
Blanchet, P. (2016). Discriminations: combattre la glottophobie. Paris: Éd. Textuel, coll. Petite Encyclopédie critique.
Bourdieu, P (1985). ¿Qué significa hablar?. Madrid: Akal
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garcia Soriano, J. (1932). Vocabulario del dialecto murciano. Madrid: C. Bermejo, impresor
Jiménez Cano, J. M. (2024). “Debate social sobre cuestiones lingüísticas en la Región de Murcia” en Molina Martos, I. et al (eds).Caminos y palabras. Estudios de variación lingüística dedicados a Pilar García Mouton. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch.
Méndez Santos, M. (2025). No me gusta cómo hablas (o más bien no me gustas tú). Crítica de la discriminación lingüística. Madrid: Pie de Página.
Monroy, R.; Hernández-Campoy, J. M. (2015). “Murcian Spanish”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 45(2), 229–240.
Zamora Vicente, A. (1960). Dialectología española. Madrid: Gredos,
[5]https://www.mediasetinfinity.es/programas-tv/lo-sabe-no-lo-sabe/2025/top-videos/xuso-jones-paralizado-comentario-vecino-gandia-tengo-problemas-hablas-Murciano-40_015880885/player/
[4]https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2018/06/08/articulo/1528473584_621600.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_F6Vwj6-tI
[2] https://www.llenguamaere.com/ques_lajuntaera.html
[1] In this way, I’ve participated with different communications in international congresses with Laura Camargo (UIB) and with Esther Vivancos (UM) about glotophobia and Murcian.
