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The aim of this paper is to analyze the principle of politeness proposed by Leech (1997[1983]) from a critical perspective, emphasizing the cost / benefit dichotomy, which is exemplified by interventions extracted from social networks. To do this, publications of private profiles of social network Facebook will be used as corpus. In the same way, criticism emerged about this theory -both positive and negative- will be subject to evaluation. In conclusion it is underline the overlap between the maxims of tact and generosity, as well as the fact that the maxim of sympathy can be interpreted as a hypermaxim that includes the other five. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the importance of acquiring intercultural pragmatic competences, to be intended as the development of an attitude towards all languages that, however, the teacher cannot always conveys during her/his classes, with care and sufficient time, since this transmission goes beyond the classroom activity stricto sensu. As Gutiérrez Ordóñez stresses ("La competencia pragmática implica dominar la producción e interpretación de mensajes eficaces cuyo sentido no se obtiene únicamente del significado codificado y cuyas características formales aparecen adecuadas a los interlocutores y al contexto extralingüístico"), intercultural pragmatic competence is the balance between grammar and pragmatics, the ability to combine, in a suitable way, the linguistic structures and to adapt to the context and to the actors of the communicative event. Hence, the transmission of a formal category, such as statement modality during foreign language classrooms, is investigated with reference to its capability to teach to interpret the messages, in a pragmatically correct way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Spanish discursive markers classifications there is not usual to take into account the notions of agreement and disagreement, though it is clear that they are part of the content they are able to transmit. This paper is a pragmalinguistic approximation to the functions of agreement and disagreement in the frame of the colloquial Spanish conversation across the study of the discourse markers bueno, bien, vale and de acuerdo. We try to raise: a. The differences between the meaning of the signs with which we deal and others with similar meaning (desde luego, claro…); b. The similarities and differences of bueno, bien, vale and de acuerdo when expressing the agreement and disagreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication works because of inferential processes that guarantee comprehension. Therefore, we need idiomatic expressions that can restrict these processes, guide the listener/reader to the expected effects, and reduce his cognitive effort in processing the utterances. Discourse particles operate as such guides since they determine the interpretation of units with conceptual meaning. The role of discourse particles in textual comprehension and production has been contrasted in several descriptive studies. Experimental studies allow us to complete these descriptive hypotheses to verify reactions (i.e. the cognitive effort) to given stimuli (i.e. texts). In our paper we intend to present the hypotheses, methods and the results of some experiments in order to find an answer to a very simple question: Is it possible to measure the importance of discourse particles in textual comprehension? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on certain grammatical constructions whose interpretation depends on the presence or absence of the article. The concept of grammatical construction it's that of form/meaning pairings (as found in construction-based approaches). Grammatical constructions have meanings that are not necessarily the sum of their parts. Thus, the behaviour of a grammatical word such as articles shows that in grammar syntax, semantic and pragmatics are indissociable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper studies the relationship between Pragmatics and Grammar in the processes of linguistic change. Against this backdrop, we describe the evolution of the Spanish verbal construction venir + a + infinitivo as a modal verbal periphrase. The evolution of this verbal construction shows that in many cases grammar results from the linguistic codification of pragmatic meaning. In the case of venir + a + infinitivo, the periphrase codes the speaker's point of view about the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Discourse Markers explores the interdiscipline crossroad zone by excellence in where Grammar and Pragmatic interacts. In this framework, in this paper is propose a grammar and pragmatic description of the spanish discourse marker por un lado… por otro. The examples, that exhaust the more significant possibilities of use of this discourse marker, have been extracted of a Corpus of 60,000 journalistic articles of diverse genre. In the grammar characterization of the discourse marker are described the prototypical forms and the variants of contextual adaptation that it more habitually adopts por un lado… por otro in relation to the diverse grammar functions that can carry out. Por un lado… por otro is a discourse marker with a discontinuous structure in the textual space that makes cohesion from diverse textual fragments by means of logical interrelations. The marker orders in a symmetrical way a semantically homogenous space, indicating that the two discursive sequences, although sometimes in a contrastive way, take part of the same commentary. In its pragmatic characterization is analyzed the computational information of processing that contributes por un lado… por otro to discourse. The pragmatic function of discourse markers has an interactive nature and its consists of guiding the interpretative trajectory of the textual users. Discourse markers works, first, as an ostensive stimulus (that is to say, like a element of focalization used in a deliberate way by the producer by take the control of attention of the receiver) that, secondly, they guide the process of discursive interpretation, taking influence in a positive way in the minimization of the processing effort that makes the receiver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]