Lo verbal y su función modelizante

Abstract

In this article the author analyzes textual fragments of the fiction work of Miguel Angel Asturias, aiming towards the isolation of some structural procedures due to the use made by Asturias of the Spanish language as interpreting system for reproducing in the semiotic space of verbal elements some non-verbal sign configurations of Mayan culture. The author also intends to show how these processes, born of the modeling function of phonemes and graphemes, both offer the reader of aun American fiction a model of reading and serve to place the Guatemalan author's fiction in a line of literary development characterized by a reaction against the centralism of European culture in the first half of this century.