Choosing a Literary Excerpt: 'Coger,' 'Vosotros,' and Cultural Allusion
An advanced Spanish class is about to read a Peninsular poem that includes the lines 'Cogimos las flores del jardín / y vosotros mirabais la siesta.' The department chair wants to keep the poem because it is on the approved list and supports literary analysis. Two students from Argentina and one from Mexico laugh nervously at cogimos; another student asks why the poem uses vosotros instead of ustedes. The teacher has one class period before the lesson and must decide whether to keep the text, how to gloss it, and how to handle the lexical reaction without derailing analysis. The class includes 24 students: 9 heritage speakers, 12 L2 learners, and 3 exchange students from Spain.
1. Do you keep the poem? Justify your decision using linguistic, literary, and pedagogical reasoning.
Read the worked answer
Keep it, but frame it. Linguistically, coger is standard Peninsular Spanish for 'to take/pick' and is used in the poem's literal sense. In much of Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico, coger is vulgar, so heritage speakers may react. That reaction is itself a teachable fact about dialect variation, not a reason to ban the text. Pedagogically, the poem offers vosotros, a Peninsular form students will meet in literature, and a cultural allusion to la siesta. Removing it would narrow the curriculum and suggest that one variety is the only legitimate Spanish. I would keep the approved text, gloss coger as 'tomar/recoger' in this context, and explicitly note its regional meaning. I would not force students to say it aloud if they are uncomfortable; they can write it. The goal is critical reading, not endorsement.
2. Plan the pre-reading and glossing. What do you put on the board, and what do you avoid?
Read the worked answer
On the board: a three-column chart: forma en el poema / uso peninsular / equivalente neutro. Coger → tomar, recoger → tomar. Vosotros mirabais → ustedes miraban. La siesta → short midday rest. I would explain that vosotros is used in Spain for informal plural, while ustedes is the norm in Latin America and formal in Spain. I would avoid jokes or caricatures about coger; instead, I would say plainly: 'In some countries this word is vulgar; here it means picked.' I would ask students to predict meaning from context before giving the gloss. Then I would read the poem aloud myself, or play a recording, so no student is put on the spot. Finally, I would have students rewrite one line in their own variety as a transposition exercise, not as a correction of the original.
3. Write two analysis questions that move beyond the lexical reaction and require interpretation of address forms and setting.
Read the worked answer
- Tone and address: The speaker uses vosotros and cogimos. Who is included in each form? How does the shift between nosotros and vosotros shape the reader's sense of who is speaking to whom? Support with two words from the poem.
- Symbol and setting: The poem places flowers and la siesta in the same scene. What does the midday rest suggest about time, class, or custom in the poem's setting? How would the meaning change if the scene were set at night? Use one line as evidence. These questions require interpretation and awareness of address forms, not just translation. A strong answer might note that vosotros creates a second-person plural addressee while cogimos includes the speaker in a past action, producing a shared but divided memory.