El año que aprendimos a ratonear: la adopción de innovaciones lingüísticas latinoamericanas en el discurso futbolístico peruano

This study aims to shed light on the spread of the word ratonear and its morphological derivatives in Peruvian Spanish, specifically with the meaning of ‘to deploy a highly defensive game strategy in football’. Drawing on the Coserian understanding of language change as a tightly knit sequence of innovation followed by adoption, and considering the relevance of studying contact between different varieties of the same language, as well as the possibilities offered by Computer-Mediated Communication and digital press, an explanation will be provided to understand the arrival and diffusion of ratonear and related terms among Peruvian football fans and journalists. The search for documentation in electronic corpora, Twitter/X posts, and digital newspaper archives will be reported. Finally, the possibility that the neologism may have originated from Mexican and/or Chilean Spanish will be discussed.