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The aim of this paper is to examine the strategies of (im)politeness existing in public profiles in the comments provided by users of the social networks Facebook and Twitter. The publications of three Spanish political leaders have been selected: Mariano Rajoy, Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias; more specifically, the publication in which the mentioned individuals announced their participation in the Spanish debate about the state of the nation, which was hosted in the three cases on both Facebook and Twitter. The analysis was not performed on these publications, but on the comments that other users wrote in such publications. The main conclusion is the dominance of discursive categories related to impoliteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper addresses a problematic issue: the possibility of coordination between elements that appear in the left margin of the utterance. The methodology is a pragmalinguistic approach and a macrosyntactic proposal applied on a corpus. The author proposes a structure of the utterance and analyses the combinatorial possibilities within the left margin, limiting the research to the coordination by conjunction y. The possible interpretations of the results are: to consider a single area on left periphery or more, and consider whether the connectives (discourse markers) belong to that area or are extrasentential elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exceptive hypothesis is expressed in current Spanish through different conjunctive phrases. The main aim of paper is to identify the discursive values and argumentative functions performed by them, highlighting the differences and similarities between them. This completes the formal description of these units. The study relies on analysis of two hundred examples of each of these phrases, taken from the CREA and CORPES XXI. Methodologically, we follow the signs of pragmatic Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modality appears in conversational Spanish markers vamos and vaya as a result of their modal origin from subjunctive forms. Some of their implicit modal values are gone conventionalizing because of their continued interaction with certain contexts, while other ones have weakened as the textual values of these elements were strengthened. In this paper, we focus on one of the modal functions of these markers that has barely been addressed in the literature, despite its considerable functional performance. This is reaffirmation propositional function, which presents distinctive formal and functional features that allows it to be considered as an independent (sub)function of these conversational markers, and in particular, their constructional derivatives and . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the analysis of the locution gracias a Dios, this article provides a model for the linguistic description of Spanish evaluative expressions according to the objectives that should be considered in an exhaustive study of this kind of modal words. To this end, this paper offers some observations on the categorial characterization of gracias a Dios, the discursive instructions that make up its semantic information and ultimately the pragmatic effects favoured by its meaning. Furthermore, the linguistic study of gracias a Dios can explain relations with other emotive expressions in Spanish that can evaluate a discourse positively, but that offer some differences concerning its distributional properties, its semantic values and the communicative intentions which can be used nowadays. [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]

This paper is focused on the concept of phraseolexical variation, meant as the existence of both lexical and phraseological alternatives to express the same meaning. After this first approach, we delve into the description of the use of the exclusive focus particles solo, solamente, nada más and nada más que by analyzing data extracted from a sociolinguistic corpus of spoken Spanish in the city of Granada (Spain). Our results conclude that there is a higher expressivity associated with the phraseological variants (nada más, nada más que) compared to the lexical ones due to different factors related to its sociolinguistic distribution. On the one hand, there is a social variable: the speakers’ educational level; on the other hand, we distinguish a pragmatic variable: the phraseological variant tendency to develop specific contextual effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the discursive function of the construal [[subject NP] [VP1st/2nd pl] ], which is specific for Spanish. We will show how the prototypical construal, with a plural substantive subject referring to a nationality, profession or sociological group, imposes its features on the more peripheric variants (a subgroup, individualization through proper nouns or professional titles, a non-human subject or a singular subject). Finally, we analyze the pragmatic and rhetorical effects of the construal, viz. the precision of the subject and the creation of a community feeling (through inclusion or the imposition of a categorization). [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]

Verbal politeness is one of the principles which regulate interactional dynamics. Success in communication is the outcome of a conjoint activity carried out by co-communicators. Hence, linguistic activity is also social activity. In this picture, politeness is one of the main social activities contributing to success. Two of the most important semantic and pragmatic ways to express politeness are Face Flattering Acts and mitigating (attenuating or hedging) acts. The former are used to intensify or to enhance the speaker's expressions (in compliments, acknowledgements, and so on), whereas the latter are employed to minimize the speaker's point of view, especially when it affects the hearer's face. If the main goal of conversation is to reach some kind of mutual agreement --be it linguistic or social--, having a good command of both kinds of politeness is a most important advantage for speakers. The present article is an attempt to study mitigating acts, from a threefold approach. Firstly, a semantic approach deals with the meaning encoded in some attenuating devices; attention will be paid to the concept of scale, which provides a partial ordering of terms according to their semantic structure. Secondly, a pragmatic approach studies mitigation as a strategy to gain the hearer's acceptation. Finally, a sociopragmatic approach explains mitigation and politeness on the light of cultural differences, and makes use of concepts such as approach or communicative immediateness. The main hypothesis of this paper is that the threefold approach described above can account for some differences in the use of attenuating devices in American and Peninsular Spanish: for instance if cultures of approaching promote immediateness, this could favour a preference for boosting over attenuating strategies, without being regarded as impolite, threatening or excessively flattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the relationship between digital writing, grammatical norms, and pragmatic strategies. Concretely, in this study is supported the hypothesis that telematic communication users adapts verbal pragmatic strategies, when actually this activity concern to the area of writing. This peculiar employment of electronic mail, as a hybrid between what is verbal and what is written, provoke discrepancies between the norm and the use that, in many occasions, are solved in wrong electronic messages, ineffectual, improper or incomprehensible, that they can even to deteriorate, when not to collapse, the traffic fluency of information in the enterprise and academic organizations. This oralized use of writing maybe shows the initial stage of an adaptation process to a new telecomunicative world. It's necessary to propose guides for the good use of the electronic mail who integrate normative perspective, grammar and pragmatic in a new epistolar rhetoric for cyberspace. [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]