Visibility and Representation of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish on Social Media: The “Señora Son de Amores” on TikTok

Torres-Vásquez L. · Letras (Peru) (2025) · DOI: 10.30920/letras.96.144.9

Resumen

Becoming an internet celebrity is a challenging task for the thousands of aspiring and established content creators on social media. This may be due to the time and originality required to gain a fan base and ongoing new followers. However, some reach this status as a consequence of going viral. This is the case of the “Señora Son de Amores” on TikTok. This study explores the creative, discursive, and social practices of a Peruvian Amazonian Spanish speaker and TikToker in her viral clip Tutorial son de amores (Padil-la, 2024) and in the video Comiendo mango verde con sal (Padilla, 2022). Using tools from Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) and informed by corpus analysis, this paper examines TikTok's affordances to foster visibility and representation of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish and how an influencer’s virtual self and self-representation may constitute an affirmation of sociocultural and linguistic identity and aid in increasing the acceptance of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish. This paper contributes to the understanding of linguistic ideologies and practices of a Peruvian Amazonian Spanish speaker and how her attained fame could help to mitigate stigmatization and under-representation of this linguistic variety.

Instituciones: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas