¿Qué quiere decir caló? Matices de un glotónimo

Abstract

Caló is in European Spanish a polysemous word that has often combined history with an imagined reality or a myth. Today it usually designates ‘the language of Spanish Gypsies’ but in the past it meant ‘criminal slang’ or both notions together, not excluding each other. The aim of the paper is to study “what was being talked about when caló was being talked about” through history. First we will see in certain detail historical sources for the study of caló. We will be interested in how authors interested with caló perceived and characterized it and what ideological attitudes they showed. Older sources focused on the point of view of the mainstream society because testimonies coming from Gypsy authors were not available until recently. In this paper we propose to trace the evolution of the term as conditioned by exogenic as well as endogenic points of view. We will pay attention to who used the word and with what ideological attitudes. Another question would be whether the point of view of the mainstream society has influenced the endogenic point of view, that is the perception and value of the word as it is seen today by some authors of Spanish Gypsy origin.