Recurrence of cacophony in linguistic expression of university professionals

Abstract

Cacophony is a language vice that is committed in oral and written forms. It consists of an unpleasant sound for the ear, originating from the unnecessary, recurrent or close repetition of phonemes in the same sentence or from the inappropriate combination of the different components of a sentence. It constitutes a very frequent linguistic fact in the professional context of the University of Medical Sciences of Villa Clara, Cuba. Hence, the objective of the work was to analyze the recurrence of cacophony in the linguistic expression of university professionals. It represents an essentially qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and synchronous study, where the universe and the intentional sample were made up of 20 research projects, framed between 2021 and 2023; in addition, theoretical methods were used ―analysis-synthesis, induction-deduction―; empirical methods ―observation and documentary review―, as well as the linguistic method of discourse analysis. On the other hand, the percentage analysis contributed to the processing of the information. As a result, the recurrence of cacophony was found in 331 incidents, the highest incidence of which is related to the suffixes “–ción” ―113 incidents (34.1%)―, and “–al” ―(73 incidents (22%)―. Finally, the authors state that this work has also been carried out with the intention of constituting a recommendable alert for all professionals who work as teachers or communicators, in a general sense. In this regard, some postgraduate courses are also offered, where cacophony is included among the linguistic topics covered.