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In Argentina, food and nutrition diseases are complex social problems that cover a wide range, from malnutrition deaths in a food producer country, to bulimia and anorexia in middle-class youth, among other issues like the increase in cases of diabetes and heart disease linked to the non-stopping growth of obesity. These problems mentioned are related to urgent situations, that even though rises from different social and economic contexts, the State should provide an answer. Obesity has become a central issue for the public agenda since excess weight has ceased to be the healthy signal of physical and economic well-being to become a disease, which must be fought by all means. Different programs have been carried out by the State to control and prevent it, with the collaboration of private sectors, including specialized medical centers. They propose different medical approaches, with their theoretical assumptions and therapeutic approaches, which are fundamental, because they are performative, both on disease control, as to the subjectivity, practices and lifestyles of the patient. In this paper we will analyze the discourse of the support groups for the therapies of obesity of patients in undergoing treatment. We will address the interactions in groups, managed by the participants themselves through the mobile networks, which set the determining weight of the medical assumptions about their identities, behaviors and attitudes. Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995, 2003, 2006), from a multimodal perspective (Kress, 2010) and qualitative (Guba and Lincoln, 1994) is the theoretical and methodological framework of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was at first intended to explore the nature and functioning of parenthetical discoursal units in the political debate genre. However, upon closer inspection of the functioning of these units, it was thought appropriate to pin down a more general criterion under which the concept of "parenthetical" could be subsumed. The notion deemed here appropriate for this purpose is that of discontinuous designation or referential twist, which will be referred to throughout this paper as referential leap or leap for short. The research presented here is not meant to be a statistical study based on large quantities of data and backed up in a scientifically rigorous way. Rather, it sets out to offer some impressionistic insights into referential discontinuities, including parentheticals, as attested in the political discussion broadcast on TVE on December 14th, 2015, between the leaders of the up to then two major political parties in Spain, namely, Mariano Rajoy, as the representative of the conservative party (PP), and Pedro Sánchez, as the representative of the socialist party (PSOE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social relevance and indoctrinator power of television are apparent facts nowadays. For this reason, deep analysis of different kinds of programs broadcasted by TV is highly relevant. That relevance becomes a social necessity when it comes to talking about certain programs that fill many broadcasting hours, obtain high audience ratings and, most important, have as a salient feature turning verbal aggressiveness into a media show. In that context, this paper deals with a comprehensive analysis and a systematic description of the strategies of verbal impoliteness used daily by talk show guests of Sálvame (a TV show broadcasted by Telecinco), strategies that constitute the usual trend of the development of that program. From a critical perspective and sustained by theoretical principles of pragmatics and conversational analysis, the paper constitutes, in addition, a critical reflection on Sálvame as global communicative phenomenon. The research has been developed on a corpus of almost five hundred minutes of conversation, extracted from a whole week of Sálvame Diario, between the 17th and 21st of December, 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cohesion in a text can occur through different linguistic devices. Some of these package the propositional content of whole previous stretches of text. In the absence of terminological unanimity, in this paper they will be analyzed under the label nominal encapsulation. The aim of this paper is thus to qualitatively examine the discursive shifts taking part in the translation of encapsulating mechanisms in parliamentary discourses having Spanish as target language and any other of the main European languages (namely English, French, German, Italian) as source language. For this purpose, a corpus-assisted analysis has been carried out. We have studied a parallel corpus containing the Proceedings of the European Parliament between the years 1996 and 2009, called Europarl5 (Koehn, 2005). The results obtained reveal that most of the shifts pertaining to encapsulating devices embody an explicitation process which tends to make the target text in Spanish more evaluative than the source text through discourse labels. This may be partially explained by the conventions that seem to underlie parliamentary discourses in Spanish and partially by the general tendency to explicitation in the translation process that has been traditionally hypothesized in Translation Studies. [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]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the information about the paraverbal communication provided by Spanish manuals of forensic eloquence published in the 19th century. Specifically, the works analyzed are: Sainz de Andino (1847[1828]), Enciso Castrillón (1840), Corradi (1843), Saurí y Lleopart (1847), Pérez de Anaya (1848), López (2013[1849]) and León y Olarrieta (1862). In conclusion, the first published manual is the one that contains more information on paraverbal communication, followed by Enciso Castrillón (1840) and Corradi (1843). In the same way, it should be emphasized that in many of the works studied the pauses have a prominent role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper explores the relationship between pragmatic functions on conversational-discursive development and the gestures, within McNeill's (2016) theoretical frame, appeared along with these functions. In order to achieve this, firstly, linguistics structures that carry out pragmatics functions are recognized; secondly, the interrelation that this pragmatically marked structures with gestures is described; and, thirdly, frequent relations are analyzed in terms of the cooccurrence of such communicational resources. Furthermore, it is presented a first attempt to describe sexual variation about the relation between pragmatic management and gestures. The analyses of six conversational narrations conclude there are some relations between given topic (GTop) and completive focus (FocCompl) with various types of gestures. These cooccurrences are nonstatic and should be reviewed in a more extensive corpus. Also, data shows that male-female couples present more pragmatically marked functions than the other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the linguistic and textual procedures through which adolescent subjects reformulate metaphorical expressions in a conversational context. My purpose is to examine the nature of the resources used in said reformulation, and to specifically analyze the procedures of metadiscursive qualification (Gülich and Kotschi 1995; Ciapuscio 2007a, 2007b) through which speakers comment and/or evaluate metaphorical expressions: the study reviews their presence, distribution and variation in exchanges among adolescent subjects who have been asked to reformulate metaphorical expressions in the context of a face-to-face conversation. My aim is to elucidate the extent to which the type and frequency of metadiscursive qualification accompanying and signaling reformulation processes are correlated with the degree of conventionality of the reformulated metaphorical expressions and, additionally, to contribute to the research on metaphor in a text corpus, especially, to the question regarding the conventional vs. innovative character of metaphors (Hanks 2004, 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the connection between oral competence and the argumentation within the juridical language context. These connections are based on the idea that the ability to use oral language increases its value when related to juridical aspects, where a significant part of the legal actions -court hearing and trials- is still an oral interactive situation. In addition, it is important to consider that the legal process, from the rule regulation until its application, is basically an argumentative action. Both aspects are tackled from the diachronic perspective, starting from the classical rhetoric contributions to the most recent neo-rhetoric and pragmatic argumentative theories, resulting in the reviewing of the different Juridical Argumentative Theory versions and its principal postulate. Conclusions are leading to the benefit of empowering the de iure reasoning structure and the control of orality in the jurist professional career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper analyses the speech that Esperanza Aguirre pronounced on June 13, 2015 in the Madrid City Council. This speech is very relevant because it anticipates the arguments that the Partido Popular will use in other elections. The goals are to understand Aguirre's narration about the latest municipal elections of Madrid and study her arguments. To this end, I have followed the works of Perelman, van Dijk and Lakoff, among others, in order to achieve an appropiate theoretical framework. Finally, the analysis shows how Aguirre presents herself as the legitimate winner of the elections and how Manuela Carmena is discredited for that position because of her relationship with Podemos, who don't accept the 1978 consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among verbal (im)politeness phenomena, greetings are particularly important in institutional interactions, both from the point of view of their expression and their perception (Placencia 2001; Ferrer 2003; Rigatuso 2003 and 2015; Sánchez Lanza 2003; Murillo Medrano 2004). In this paper, which is part of a broader research on expression and perception of (im)politeness in customer service encounters in health and educational institutions in a city in the linguistic area of the Buenos Aires Spanish variety, we propose to analyze the dynamics of greetings in interactions between employees and users in educational institutions, specifically considering the opening and closing instances of the communicative event. Greetings, as speech acts, are emphasized by the users as fundamental for the expression of politeness in these contexts. We attend in particular to the presence/absence of greetings, the schemes in which they are inserted, the formulas used, who formulates them and how they contribute to the expression of politeness in the institutional discourse. Our theoretical and methodological approach is based on Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982 and 2001; Tannen 1985, 1996 and 2004), with contributions from Ethnography of communication (Gumperz and Hymes 1972), Goffman's Microsociology (1967) and Discourse analysis (Drew and Sorjonen 2000). For the study of politeness phenomena, we follow leading researchers in Sociocultural Pragmatics (Bravo 1999; Bravo and Briz 2004; Kaul 2008 and 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with the Dialogical Approach to Argumentation and Polyphony, in this paper, I focus on the quotative evidential points of view expressed through metadiscursive negation in a corpus of political speeches given by various Argentine politicians. My goal is twofold. On one hand, I try to show that, in these cases, the negative enunciation is presented as triggered by discourse frames related to previous or potential speeches, i.e., by argumentative chains presented as the origin of the enunciation. On the other, I aim to prove that in a dialogical reply to those discourse frames, on which enunciation is based, a certain positioning of the speaker is built, together with a certain ethos (Ducrot 1984; Amossy 1999). Considering different scenographies (Maingueneau 1999) in political enunciation, which are adjusted according to the different addressees, I make a distinction between the confrontation, pedagogical, humbleness, self-defense (concerned with preserving one's image and equality) and closeness ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an initial draft of the research that Professor Lopez Eire was carrying out at the request of the editors of this monographic study (vol. 12 of Oralia) at the time of his tragic death in a traffic accident. We asked his widow for permission to include this theoretical part, which was planned to be included in a more extensive paper including examples of interventions by Spanish political leaders in the mass media. His widow told us that professor López Eire had spent part of the summer of 2008 working on the video analysis and draft notes of the various DVDs that we had sent to him at his request. Unfortunately, those personal notes were never transformed into a final analytical text. The publication of this part of his work is a posthumous tribute to one of the most eminent researchers of rhetoric in Spanish academia. His scientific production covered both ancient rhetoric (he was a Professor of Greek at Salamanca University) and pioneering, ground-breaking studies in rhetoric and communication. His prolific activity, reflected in numerous books and papers, and his reputation as an organizer and promoter of conferences, associations, and journals had a lasting impact on the Spanish university of the late 20th century. This paper is also confirmation of his interdisciplinary skills, and reveals his thoughts on the relationship between rhetorical and cognitive studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My intention in this paper is to describe what constitutes the linguistics of saying, a proposal made by Ortega y Gasset and developed on the basis of his philosophy and the principles of the linguistics of speaking by Eugenio Coseriu. Saying comes before speaking; speaking is determined by saying, and both suppose the act of knowing and, thus, thought. The act of speech, then, is lógos, meaningful lógos or historical lógos, and lógos apophantikós, the lógos revealing the inner reality of the speaker. The linguistics of saying deals with the birth of speech, a given in the subject who speaks, says, and knows. A series of intellective operations leading to the act of knowledge are postulated, namely, selection, the establishment of a designation, the creation of a class or an essence, relation, nomination and determination. They are all manifested in language. At the same time, in linguistic analysis two further functions are established: The object of saying and the object of knowledge. This paper consists of a theoretical introduction and an illustration of the different functions given in the act of speech, conceived of in its production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the Spanish discourse marker por cierto is analyzed. Although por cierto has been classified in the previous literature as a digressor, discourse markers that accompany and mark what we intuitively perceive as a digression, very few has been said so far about these particles. In this paper I offer an explanation of the concept of digression that makes it possible to describe the functions of the Spanish discourse marker por cierto, differentiating its use as a digressor from other uses. The analysis is based on the notions of rupture with the previous discourse --explained using the Theory of Information Structure in Discourse by Roberts (1996), relation with the previous discourse fragment and informative significance, defined in terms of argumentative orientation and force, and salience in discourse. Providing a definition of a digression independent of the use of por cierto allows us to distinguish the central value of this digressor from its uses introducing a new topic and marking the high informative significance of a discourse fragment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Members of Parliament and those who attend Parliament sessions are not only listeners but have the opportunity to react through different types of disruption (Cortés 2015a, 2015b). One of these is protest, which is conceived as a form of verbally expressed disapproval, displaying an opposition both to what is currently stated by the speaker and to forms of disagreement shown by other members of Parliament. However, this particular device of disruption has not received much attention in previous research. In this paper the reasons justifying such protests come under closer scrutiny, together with the conditions propping up their appearance in the co-text and the context of parliamentary speech. Two groups have been identified: those which have been produced to react to the content of the prior speaker's intervention (with different subgroups whether protest goes together with other means of disruption), and those types of protest which react to previous disruption, such as applause. For the study, we have selected a corpus of initial speeches of Presidents (of the Spanish Government) and opposition leaders in Parliamentary debates in Spain between 1997 to 2015; the corpus duration is 29h 13min 51s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study starts from the premise that the linguistic skills of grammatical nature involved in speech production of children with Asperger syndrome are shown intact or unaltered, whereas most of the dysfunctions in the discursive dimension are associated to specifically pragmatic skills. This idea is compatible with the underconnectivity theory, according to which there would be a neurophysiological correlate capable of explaining such discrepancies between grammatical and pragmatic skills. Likewise, it is considered that communicative dysfunctions in Asperger syndrome may be due to an integration deficit. In order to support these assumptions, the analysis of different categories is carried out; more exactly, grammatical skills (syntactic complexity and lexical diversity, cohesion and coherence) are compared to pragmatic skills (principle of cooperation and editing tasks). For this, forty recordings transcribed in CHAT format (Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts) were taken into account. Twenty of them came from speakers with Asperger syndrome, and the other twenty, from speakers without this disorder. The results of this analysis reinforce the starting point of the paper, according to which there would be clear dissonances between the structural abilities of language and the communicative ones. Finally, with the ambition to reach a greater comprehension about communication disorders, particularly about Asperger syndrome, this research seeks an interdisciplinary connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of conceptual metaphor theory and from the perspective of conversation analysis, this paper focuses on conceptual metaphors, metaphorical expressions, and the formulation efforts carried out by doctors and patients to communicate different aspects of cardiac crises. The main questions articulated in this study are: How do interactants describe and reconstruct cardiac crises and associated events? What role and relevance do metaphorical procedures have in those conversational tasks? According to the discursive roles, is it possible to identify specificities in the selection of metaphor type, in the chosen procedures and formulation resources, and in the functions metaphors acquire in the exchanges?. The analysis is based on a corpus of conversations among cardiologists and patients that took place in different healthcare services institutions in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the use of irony as a persuasive resource in two interviews, given by Rafael Correa (president of Ecuador) and the spokesperson of the PAH (The Platform of People affected by Mortgages), Ada Colau (currently mayor of Barcelona), in 2012 and 2013 respectively. Both interviews refer to the subject of the evictions in Spain. For the analysis of this trope from a systemic perspective, we have based ourselves on the constructivist proposal of Hayden White, a philosopher of history, who analyzes this trope (together with metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche, following the humanist Vico's tradition) in relationship with the plot of a historical work and the ideology which is being constructed. White's dialectic relationship established between the historical meaning of a book and the author's discursive resources selected to convey this meaning is an example of an extremely useful analytical proposal for the analysis of ideological discourses. Specifically, White's proposal helps us to interrelate dialectically irony (a kind of macro-function) with the various linguistic and discursive forms used in the text (narratives, free direct speech, lexical opposites, etc.), and the context within which these discourses take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to study the discursive polemic regarding the proposed new schema of agro-export taxes that took place in Argentina during the first half of the year 2008. In this context, the presence of ideological signs (Voloshinov, 1976 [1926]), that are the focus of discursive struggles for the imposition of different accentuations, becomes an important indicator of the construction of the discursive polemic. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circulation of the signs campo and distribución, in particular, with the objective of determining their role in the struggle to establish discursive iniciative (Raiter et al., 1999) within said polemic. To that end, we analyze and contrast, in public speeches of the argentinean President, on the one hand, and of leaders of the agrarian organizations oposed to the new tax, on the other, the acentuations that these two signs acquire. In the first place, we consider the lexical-semantic relations at play (Dubois, 1962), as well as the role of these signs in the configuration of different topics (Van Dijk, 1978) that organize these discourses' local meanings. Furthermore, in order to specify the various ways in which these topics are constructed, we also take into account the components of political discourse defined by Verón (1984), as well as the presence of forms of manifest heterogeneity (Authier-Revuz, 1984) in the discursive and interdiscursive linkage of topics. The analysis reveals the complexity of one of the possible nodes of this polemic: the role of the State in the generation of economic growth and the equitable distribution of its effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a set of narratives on critical episodes by people affected by migraine. The voice of patients has acquired higher relevance in recent years, after being long postponed in the field of medicine. Linguistic research on patients' discourse can contribute to the knowledge on and understanding of this disorder, and even to its diagnosis, as shown among others by the researches on cardiac and convulsive illnesses carried out by German and British teams (Gülich and Schöndienstt, 1999; Schwabe et al., 2008; Schwabe et al., 2007). In this article I present, from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory and of discursive production theory, an analysis of a corpus of patient narratives in which people explain their migraine attacks: I am interested in expanding the knowledge on how these patients conceptualize and transmit their illness and its main symptom, i.e. headache. The analysis of patients' contributions focuses both on the qualitative aspects of pain and on the description of its intensity, which is particularly rich as regards expressive procedures and resources and leads, occasionally, to the thematization of feelings of fear and panic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the use of the alternation attenuation/intensification as an argumentative strategy in the political discourse. We have used ten interpellations from the Journal of Sessions of the Parliament of Andalucía, belonging to the VIIIth Term (2010-2011), and six interpellations from the IXth Term (2013-2014). The distribution attenuation/intensification does not follow the pattern which is to be hoped: according to the role of the member of Parliament -according to his role of more power (Government) / less power (Opposition)-the politician should use intensification in speeches in which he shows his achievements, and he should use attenuation in his defence before accusations; whereas a member of Parliament belonging to the Opposition should preferably use intensification as an essential resource for accusation and critique. However, we can find situations in which, from positions of denouncement or critique, some members of Parliament use attenuation not only as a resource but as a constitutive principle of his entire discourse. This fact is in principle paradoxical, but it has a very clear argumentative functionality: attenuation can be used in order to intensify the argumentative strength of the discourse. The alternation attenuation/intensification focuses on the propositional content, intensifying it. The difficult equilibrium of the play attenuation/intensification shows the tension between the desire for softening, in order to protect the image, and the desire for accusing clearly, in order to discredit the adversary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of conversational data has been considered of great interest in renewing the criteria of aphasia assessment and aphasia rehabilitation. By assuming this point of departure, the specific objective of the present paper will be to examine conversational interaction as illustrative of preserved metacognitive abilities associated with verbal behavior in people with aphasia. These abilities are supposedly sustained by a domain of intersection between the cognitive basis of verbal behavior and the executive function, i.e. a domain of interrelationship between language and high psychological processes (cf. Hernández Sacristán, Rosell Clari, Serra Alegre and Quiles-Climent, 2012). Differences and commonalities will be shown after examining three aphasic subjects (two fluent and one non-fluent case) in a -basically- free conversational interaction with family members and/or interviewers. The metacognitive dimension of verbal behavior includes abilities such as strategic inhibition of the linguistic use, control of concurrent semiotic procedures (e.g. phonic and kinesic gesturing), co-constructional activity, referred speech, etc. Conversational data provide the natural context for the expression of metacognitive activity associated with language. The abilities under examination have been also considered useful for developing therapeutic programs (cf. Hernández Sacristán and Rosell Clari, 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the functions played by interjections in sermons of the eighteenth century, which sole purpose was preaching from the pulpit. Rhetorical speech finds in the oral tradition its construction model. Hence the frequency of this element of pragmatic significance in sermons: the interjection, among other linguistic elements that characterize this oral genre, becomes an index of communicative interchange between the two interlocutors of the speech: preacher and auditorium. It intensifies the interactional dimension of the act of enunciation. The high presence of expressions that contains interjections in texts from the eighteenth century should be in relation to the social context at that time and the functional tone of the homily, essentially admonishing and moralizing. In the third part of the present study the most used primary interjections are compiled and exemplified their basic discoursal functions: attitudinal, interaccional and phatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe a version of the CHAT (Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts) transcription format developed with the purpose of enabling open-access to the PerLA corpus of language pathologies through the Talkbank International Database. In doing so, adapting PerLA to a transcription and coding format compatible with CLAN (Computerized Language ANalysis) software for automatic language analysis was required. However, CHAT conventions are not compulsory, but they allow for a wide range of variations depending on the nature of data, the scope of the study for which the data have been collected, and the kind of phenomena that are considered relevant for coding. The adaptation offered here has been envisaged to allow the transcription and coding of data showing a wide variety of language and communication disorders, in order to carry out further studies from a pragmatic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the elements of public discourse where affectivity is used as a communicative strategy. In particular, we focus on the analysis of affect through intonation in a two-candidate Spanish electoral debate, with two objectives in mind: (i) to measure the speaker's involvement in his/her speech and in the speech event (the debate), thus establishing a link between certain intonation signals and the speaker's degree of involvement, and (ii) to compare the results with the news appeared in the media, reflecting the perceptions and opinions on who of the two candidates "won the debate". Our research is based on previous studies on emotion in language, such as Janney (1996), but also using our own model of study, which we have applied to the study of political discourse (Nieto y Otero, 2012). The methodology used has consisted in the analysis of the linguistic manifestations of affect found in the openings of each of the candidates' interventions; for the acoustic analysis we have examined three parameters -fundamental frequency, intensity and vocalic duration-, pursuing the initial hypothesis on whether it is possible to find correlations between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will examine three aspects of communicative immediacy in eighteenth century documents from the Diachronic Corpus of Spanish in the Kingdom of Granada (CORDEREGRA): the use of -ico, -illo and -ito, the variation diferiencia/diferencia, osted/usted and defunto/difunto, and the loss of /d/. We want to emphasise three methodological aspects in the study of orality: the importance of a control corpus, the problems that CORDE has for the historical study of colloquial Spanish and the value of the current sociolinguistic data to interpret the history of a language. [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]

Teleshopping spots represent a paradigmatic example of argumentative and perlocutionary discourse. In them, the creative adopts different strategies in order that the target feels irresistibly attracted by the object he advertises. In this paper we analyze all the elements that, because of their individual discoursive nature, but especially due to their mutual interaction, convert an apparently informative speech into an efficient tool of seduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses what we call discursive formulation and reformulation processes (e.g., (re)formulation instances which are exclusively the result of enunciation processes and hence lack any semantic value) in the frame of a text linguistics model that aims to give a systematic account of very different reformulation facts from a multidimensional perspective. The theoretical considerations supporting our conception of discursive reformulation are submitted to an experimental investigation procedure, whose results substantiate our view that discursive reformulation (a prototypical device for spoken language) is quantitatively and qualitatively different from semantic-argumentative reformulation (the one that has deserved most of the attention in the bibliography). For this reason, we maintain that its study needs analytical procedures and theoretical concepts that differ from the ones already applied to the examination of written texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vamos con todo is a tabloid style news programme on Ecuadorian television with elements of a talk show. It uses controversy in the news and in the topics it presents as a means of attracting viewers. Through the presenters' subsequent comments, on the other hand, it attempts to minimize the controversy created, striving for a harmonious resolution of situations of conflict. Mitigation is the key strategy that presenters employ for this purpose. They resort to a range of lexical and syntactic mechanisms that function as hedges, thus minimizing the illocutionary force of their utterances. Appealing to emotion is another mechanism that they make use of to achieve a degree of closeness with their viewers. These are the mechanisms that we examine in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to reach a better understanding of the relationship between polite strategies and the phonic features displayed to express them. To do this, an oral corpus has been collected comprising interventions of academic committees (PhD and master theses). From this corpus, a set of fragments were analysed, namely countervailing positive fragments included in negative blocks and negative fragments embedded in positive blocks. The expected phonic behaviour is an increased phonic prominence in the former case and a decrease in the latter one. Despite this tendency being satisfied in most cases, however, a percentage of the examples do not follow this expected behaviour, where the tendency towards (lack of) phonic prominence is inverted. When comparing the phonic data with the degree of planning, it can be seen that abnormal results do frequently appear in interventions with a high degree of planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the analysis of the speech by a member of parliament well known for his qualities as an orator in the first turn in a debate on labour reform, this paper analyses the survival of classical rhetoric in present-day political communication. The following aspects are taken into account: the bases of the argumentation structure, a wide concept of discursive context, and the strategies modelling the process of oralisation undergone by texts previously written. As for the execution (actio, according to the classics), verbal and paraverbal oral aspects are studied, such as voice quality, accent, intonation and delimitating procedures, as well as kinetic non-verbal aspects, such as face expression and the function of gesture. [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]

We present in this paper a quantitative and qualitative analysis of conversational styles through an inter and intra-linguistic study of different kinds of requests in Spanish and Italian dialogues, aiming to examine cultural characteristics in some way expressed by stylistic choices of speakers of two so closely related languages. We explore a corpus of Spanish and Italian task-oriented dialogues, in which two participants have to collaborate and cooperate to reach a common goal. Looking at the interactional dynamics oriented to obtain information to solve the task, we can observe that Spanish speakers do perform a wide variety of requests, asking for communicative contribution using yes-no questions, wh-questions and both specific and general questions. They verify interlocutor's availability to cooperate and require his/her attention on specific topics, but also only at the interactional level. On the other hand, Italian speakers tend to adopt mostly communicative strategies based on checks and yes-no questions, facing up to the task from their point of view. Comparing them with Spanish speakers, they seem to be more affected by the kind of task, so that the effort to solve it results to be decisive in establishing interactional patterns. We can see the features of two different styles, both determined by the effort to solve the task and by a good level of cooperation and involvement, even if each of them characterised by different modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In GRIALE research group we have developed a theoretical method to explain the ironic statements in different genres (Principle of Inversion). In this paper we focus on the application of this method in ironic statements that occur in conversation, so that irony and humor coexist in a conversational exchange. Therefore, we studied not prototypical irony and humour with examples of spanish real conversations (COVJA, Corpus colloquial conversations and CREA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the preliminary results of a study focused on the definition of an inventory, of tonal patterns in Spanish dialogue speech using the GLISSANDO corpus, a corpus aimed for prosodic studies composed by a wide sample of formal and informal dialogues recorded by several speakers. The patterns described have been obtained automatically by applying the F0 contours stylisation, annotation and modeling procedure described in Garrido (2010) to a small sample of the corpus, four interactions (three formal and one informal) between two professional radio speakers, male and female (22 minutes and 53 seconds total duration). Results suggest that tonal patterns used in Spanish dialogues are, in general, the same as the ones used in reading style, although their uses and functions are probably slightly different as it was pointed out in previous studies. In any case, an in-depth analysis of the material collected in GLISSANDO will provide more details to confirm these initial conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of expressions of exemplification in the Spanish spoken in Caracas. The purpose of this study is to determine what aspects motivate the non-canonical use of por lo menos in place of por ejemplo. For the analysis of this particular use, I have used 24 interviews of Corpus Sociolinguistic of Caracas (1987). The parameters selected are of two types: i) linguistic -values of the expressions of exemplification and of por lo menos ('al menos','como minimo'), evidentiality, and topic proposed in the preceding sentence and in the sequence introduced by expressions of exemplification and by por lo menos-, and ii) social The results show that the use of expressions of exemplification is determined by social factors. Likewise, the use of por lo menos as an expression of exemplification has been motivated by certain semantic-pragmatic and discourse features shared by por lo menos ('al menos', 'como mínimo') and por ejemplo: generalization-particularization relationship, first-hand information and maintenance of the topic addressed in a previous generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Propositional information is only part of the meaning conveyed in oral narratives. While explaining a specific situation, speakers structure their discourse and often include subjective connotations by using some discourse markers. In this paper, we compare three types of Spanish oral narratives showing differences both in their degree of spontaneity and emotionality. The narratives were, in the first place, segmented; next, discourse markers were identified and, finally, classified according to their main function (propositional, structural or modal). The main aim of this study is to show to what extent the frequency, type and function of discourse markers vary in relation to the degree of spontaneity and emotionality of oral narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to answer the question in the title: Are there any objective prosodic features in ironic utterances? To answer this question, we have analyzed phonetically two corpora of ironic utterances (the first one induced and the second one spontaneous) and we have asked a group of speakers to give us their opinion on how ironic certain utterances sounded to them. The results of the analysis plus the opinions of the speakers will give us an overview of those prosodic features of what rhetoricians and pragmatists call ironical tone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosody studies have privileged F0 variations over other parameters of sound, which carry symptomatic (emotional and affective) content only. It is also usual to assume that increased durations are associated with high-pitched focal stress as a result of phonetic implementation, with no phonological status. In this paper I want to argue for the functional independence of duration with respect to F0, based on data showing dissociation between increased duration and high tone. In Spanish, verum focus (i.e. focus on the positive polarity of a declarative sentence) can show a systematic association between low pitch and increased duration on the nuclear stress. This correlation systematically gives rise to minimal pairs and does not show in other languages of our environment. The data analysed suggest that frequency and duration encode functionally independent processing instructions: the low F0 is related to the status of the information (in this case, information already present in the conversational background), while increased duration marks focal stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent past, the highlighting of the prosodic utterance component served to avoid the concerning problem of non-grammatical constructions: the intonation group (basic unit of analysis used for demarcative purposes) went on to be the existing unit in any oral manifestation, even in those manifestations which did not achieve the degree of utterance, due to the lack of syntactic regularity. The prosodic features seemed to be the only identifiable structural resource in the speech sequence and, in this regard, intonation acquired an important role in relation to sense. From that moment, and with such considerations, the utterance in itself lost its relevance. This paper will try to show that neither the syntactic breaks nor the possible variations or alterations of melodic patterns avoid the establishment of sense or that such establishment of sense can be made in some way; that they are not an obstacle that may affect the utterance as a linguistic entity, because if sense can be established, the utterance can be also established. If the syntactic and melodic structures break, restoring mechanisms appear. These mechanisms permit speech progression and, as a result of said progression, that the utterance can be established. In order to achieve this objective, the basis of sentence phonology will be reviewed and the foundations necessary to deal with utterance phonology will be laid out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional Linguistics, prosody has rarely been considered to identify operating units of analysis. Usually, the initial segmentation establishes linguistic boundaries, based on prior knowledge of the researcher; on the basis of these boundaries, the analysis focuses on the prosodic level. Our proposal is that the unit segmentation starts at the prosodic level (specifically at the acoustic level) and other levels will further complete it. Therefore, our aim is to change the traditional perspective. Additionally, this paper proposes a (semi)automatic segmentation model for the spontaneous oral discourse. Starting from the study of the intonational groups, we present a probabilistic formula (MESTEL) that calculates the likelihood of certain segments of the oral continuum to become intonational group boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the conversational strategy known as "intensification" from a sociolinguistic perspective. The data consists of a collection of informal conversations among Spanish women from Madrid, together with a set of oral interviews with women from the same speech community. The results illustrate the social change that have developed in Madrid, as they are codified in the Spanish spoken in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at describing a tool designed for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) automatic transformation from spoken corpus documents transcribed following different standards of encoding. Procedures proposed for transformation are based on XML tools and recommendations, as DOM (Document Object Model) and XSTL (XSL Transformation). The aim is to facilitate homogenisation of spoken corpora and enhance reusability and integration in macro-corpora. The main concern is reusability of corpora built during the last two decades (with special attention to PRESEEA corpuses) using automatic procedures. Once transformed into XML documents, these texts will be more quickly and easily treated (segmentation, sound/text alignment, etc.). PRESEEA is an international project on the spoken Spanish from towns and cities in Spain and America. To attain this objective three levels of density (friendliness) of transcription are defined and their respective protocols of interchange are proposed. To show how this tool works, the application of an algorithm of transformation is step by step described showing how it proceeds, firstly, transforming the source document into a valid XML document close to the original and, secondly, through a set of consecutive depuration filters, producing a final XML valid document. To show the use and application of this tool, excerpts of documents taken from spoken corpora from PRESEEA-Project have been selected. Finally, an online tool () has been implemented to allow researchers to easily transform their own texts into XML documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral speech, whose nonverbal aspects have been discussed in Oralia before, is seen here in the realms of both the theater and the cinema. This requires that we broaden the concept of translation in order to include the possible interlinguistic and intercultural translation we face in a stage production and in the production and projection of a film. This implies, beyond our reading of a literary translation of oral speech, the "total experience", as spectators, of speech on the stage or on the screen (possibly an adaptation of an original literary text). Both theater and cinema are vehicles for the "translation" or "conversion" of written speech -showing its words, but not always its nonverbal elements- in visual images and, since the advent of sound cinema, auditive images as well, which in a movie often implies a never satisfactory dubbing with frequent incongruencies between the different elements of speech: acoustic (verbal and paralinguistic) and visual (kinesic), let alone some rather incredible lexical flaws. This paper, then, discuses: paralanguage from the original text to the stage or screen, the rather hopeless hidden challenge of descriptions translated for the performance, and, in the cinema, the blind spectators' experience and their "listening act"; the change in our perception of kinesics between silent cinema and sound films; and what is really meant by "naturalness" and "theatricality" in the speech during a performance, that is, the balance or imbalance between its interactive components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the linguistic and sociolinguistic distribution of future forms (morphological -FM- or periphrastic variants -FP-) in 1519 examples from 36 speakers, a fraction in the materials included in the Sociolinguistic corpus of Mexico City. Main results are three: 1) even though FM is still alive in Mexico City, its use is residual in several ways; 2) more significant variables are referred to the sort of variation between forms, temporal distance, epistemic character, presence of a negative domain, school years and age, among others; 3) the process -a change from below- is in its last steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the arguments put forward by Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the Partido Popular (currently Spain's major opposition party and the principal representative of the country's right wing), in response to questions about the atmosphere of tension posed by a group of citizens during Tengo una pregunta para usted (2007), a television programme in which 100 representatives from a cross section of society quiz leading politicians on a wide range of issues. The theoretical-methodological approach is based on concepts taken from discourse analysis and a cognitive perspective, as well as from rhetoric, argumentation theory and pragmadialectics. This interdisciplinary approach enables us to better address the complexity of the various levels of discursive significance and their interrelation with ideological meaning in discourse whose persuasive intentionality targets agreement between the speaker and recipients. The analysis and interpretation of the data reveals Rajoy's general lack of attention to the citizen's point of view and his tendency to break the frameworks they activate, repeatedly replacing them with his own. This indicates his interest in presenting his political programme before the television audience, rather than offering each citizen a coherent (and well-structured within a critical argument) response. In establishing his ideological position, he frequently resorts to the use of supposedly objective data (extrinsic proof), as well as the use of argumentative places, and especially the overuse of the place of essence (which for Rajoy has an overriding argumentative value). From a pragmatic perspective, he breaks the expectations generated by the speech acts used by the citizens in their questions, thereby failing to answer what he has been asked. In addition, he fails to comply with several rules by misinterpreting the citizen's intention and digressing inappropriately. Where he does accept die approach put forward, he tends to minimise die possible threat the act represents to his party's image by using a range of attenuating elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]