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Co-construction is basically a dialogical manifestation of conversational narratives, that becomes less productive when the communicative situations gain in formality and structuring. This paper analyzes the transition between conversational narrative and formal conversation to discover how co-constructions tends to disappear and get controlled in the formal communication. The study is based on an oral diaphasic corpus of Mexican Spanish, that allows to compare different levels of formality from oral conversations in different communicative situations, showing how the pragmatic conditions of the conversation operate in each level of formality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the pragmalinguistic analysis of those adverbs and expressions that qualify the formulation of the statement as sincere. Specifically, the main objective of this paper is to investigate those argumentative and social values that can be updated by these units in declarative sentences used in colloquial conversations and other interactions such as debates or interviews. From the argumentative standpoint, we found that all elements analyzed realizantes behave as modifiers: these units enhance the enunciation, reinforce the assumption of the above, and assume a preference declarative argumentiva increase strength in the utterance that are inserted. From the argumentative point of view, we have verified that all the analyzed elements behave as modifiers realizantes: these units heighten the statement, reinforce the assumption of the dictum, suppose an enunciative preference and increase the argumentative force of the utterance that are inserted. The variability is located in the social field, in which the basic discursive operation may cause different effects depending on the characteristics of the communicative situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammar studies have focused lately on speech instead of on written language, being the latter the most traditional approach. This situation confronts us with the necessity of a new definition for some grammar concepts. This paper proposes a new definition for the concept of sentence so that it can be used for spoken Spanish analysis. Already existing definitions are evaluated and discarded because they do not fit with many normal speech structures. Besides, they usually are confusing regarding syntactic, prosodic and pragmatic features. We propose a new definition only based on grammar and semantic features. Conclusions show that this approach allows the syntactic analysis of speech in a much more accurate way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the function and the use of un poco and of its morphological alterations (un poquito, un poquitín, etc.) in different levels: in speech acts, in propositions, in speech, in social relationship established between speaker and hearer, and, finally, in context. Theoretical framework of the analysis is, primarily, modality, a notion applying to utterances and indicating the compromise level which the speaker maintains in respect of the utterance faithful. Secondly, I refer to mitigation within the most general theory of Politeness, in which this is a strategy to modulate speech act effects (Lakoff, 1972; Caffi, 1999, 2002, 2007). Here I examine the function of un poco from a semantic-pragmatic perspective also taking into account discourse's dimensión and the situations in which they occur. To study the phenomenon, I use real conversations' data proceeding by the Corpus de Conversaciones Coloquiales Val.Es.Co and by the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual CREA, to which I add some fragments proceeding by conversations that I recorded and transcribed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on attenuation has experienced a huge development in the last decades, particularly from some disciplines related to oral discourse, such as Pragmatics or Discourse Analysis. Nevertheless, its sociolinguistic variation has been hardly studied. This article aims to deep on the incidence that social parameters (age and sex) have on Spanish attenuating mechanisms and their discourse functions. The paper presents the quantitative results and findings obtained from 24 semi-controlled interviews taken from PRESEEA corpus, recorded both in Madrid and Valencia, amongst high sociocultural level speakers. This research is embedded in a specific project of PRESEEA Research Group (Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y América). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]