“La lengua de mis penas y alegrías”: andalusian in Cadiz carnival coplas

In recent years, Andalusian has become a hot topic due to initiatives that have tried to transcribe it and defend it as something more than a dialect, as it is popularly claimed. Given the diversity of existing perspectives, in this research we studied how this linguistic modality is represented in a popular cultural sphere such as the carnival of Cadiz. The first objective of this study was to explore how Andalusian is described in different lyrics of coplas such as pasodobles or tangos. In order to fulfil this first objective, 16 different lyrics were analysed. The second objective was to explore how Andalusian is generally described. For this objective, 42 different coplas were reviewed, including the 16 analysed above. The results offer a detailed description of this popular perception of Andalusian, as well as an account of the different views of it.