Regional pragmatic variation in the use of the discourse marker pues in informal talk among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain)

Highlights

• Reduced forms of pues, albeit not necessarily the same, are used across varieties.

• The function of discourse markers needs to be examined with respect to their position.

• Two overall functions of pues were identified: pues as a connector and as an operator.

• There is regional variation in the use of pues as an operator and a connector.

• Some situational variation in the use of pues was found alongside regional variation.

Abstract

The discourse marker pues in spoken Spanish has been studied extensively in Peninsular Spanish (see, among many others, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 1987, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2009, Garcés Gómez, 1992, Portolés Lázaro, 1989). There is also a growing body of studies on pues in Latin American varieties of Spanish (cf. Travis, 2005, Vázquez Carranza, 2013, Zavala, 2001). Less attention, however, has been paid to this discourse marker in Chilean and Ecuadorian Spanish. Also, very little attention has been given to the study of discourse markers in Spanish from an inter-varietal standpoint. Taking a variational pragmatics perspective (Schneider and Barron, 2008), in this paper we examine the impact of region (cf. Placencia, 2011) on the use of pues in informal talk among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain). Our analysis is based on a corpus of 60 role-play interactions within each location, eliciting advice-giving and complaint talk in −SD (social distance) −P (power) scenarios.

We look at variation in the distribution of pues in relation to form, position and functions. For example, pues and its variants, which are not all shared across varieties, were found to occur in turn/act initial position only in Seville, and in act final position only in Quito and Santiago. Linked to position, two types of pues in use, each with their own functions, emerged: pues as a connector and pues as an operator. Thus our study shows that there is formal and functional variation in the use of pues across data sets, the latter linked to position.

Introduction

The discourse marker pues in spoken Spanish has been studied extensively in Peninsular Spanish (cf. Portolés Lázaro, 1989, Garcés Gómez, 1992, Porroche Ballesteros, 2002, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2009) (see section 2.1).² There is also a growing body of studies on pues in Latin American varieties of Spanish such as Bolivian (Soto Rodríguez, 2013), Colombian (Travis, 2005), Mexican (Vázquez Carranza, 2013) and Peruvian (Zavala, 2001) Spanish (see section 2.2). Less attention, however, has been given to this discourse marker in Ecuadorian and Chilean Spanish. Concerning the former, the only study available, as far as we know, is Olbertz's (2013), based on a corpus gathered in the 1970s in Salcedo, a small town in the Andean region. Also, very little attention has been given to the study of discourse markers in Spanish from an inter-varietal perspective.³

Conducting inter-varietal studies can be useful since, as Foolen (2011:222) puts it, “[n]ot all varieties of a language (national varieties, dialects, sociolects, etnolects, etc.) use the same pragmatic markers and, more difficult to discover, the same pragmatic marker can be used in different ways in different varieties”. A number of studies on English pragmatic/discourse markers indeed have showed regional variation. For example, O’Keefe and Adolphs (2008) investigated listener response tokens in British and Irish English and found some differences relating to both form and frequency of use. Likewise, Schweinberger (2015) compared the use of like as a pragmatic marker also in British and Irish English. He found regional differences that relate to two different levels: the ‘language-external social level’ and the ‘language-internal discourse-pragmatic level’ (p. 114). He concludes that historical and identity related factors are at the core of these differences. As such, inter-varietal studies can be very valuable in that they “may confirm or may refute functional interpretations made from one variety or language as not being idiosyncratic to one culture or speech community” (McCarthy, 2002:69).

Drawing on work in variational pragmatics (cf. Schneider and Barron, 2008, Placencia, 2011, Schneider and Placencia, forthcoming), in discourse markers in general (cf. Schiffrin, 1987, Fraser, 1990, Fraser, 1996, Fraser, 1999), and in Spanish in particular (cf. Portolés Lázaro, 1998, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2009), we focus in this paper on the impact of region in the use of the discourse marker pues in informal talk among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain).

Variational pragmatics is a discipline of recent creation (Schneider and Barron, 2008) that examines the influence of macrosocial factors such as region, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background on language use in context. Schneider and Barron (2008:20–21) distinguish five levels of analysis for language use in interaction: the actional or illocutionary level; the interactional or sequential level; the topic or content level; the organizational or turn-taking level, and the formal level. Regarding the latter, forms constitute the starting point of analysis; the aim is to determine the communicative functions these forms may have in discourse. Our study falls under this last level: we aim to look at the distribution and functions of pues across the three varieties of Spanish in question. This, in turn, forms the basis of our discussion of the type of category that pues constitutes in our study.

In relation to discourse markers, while we draw on a range of works in the area, we use in our analysis Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2003, Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2009 distinction between connectors and operators which builds on the work of Fraser, 1990, Fraser, 1996, Fraser, 1999, among others. For Fraser, discourse markers constitute a subcategory of pragmatic markers. Fuentes-Rodríguez, on the other hand, argues that connectors (Fraser's discourse markers) and operators (the rest of Fraser's pragmatic markers) are two distinct categories, with their own pragmatic functions and syntactic features: connectors operate at the structural level providing cohesion and they involve intersentential connection, whereas operators work at the interpersonal level and are found intrasententially.

All in all, we seek to answer the following questions:

• What variants of pues are in use in the three varieties examined and how frequently are the different forms employed?

• What is the distribution of pues and its variants across varieties according to situation?

• What turn/act position(s) do pues and its variants occupy?

• What are the functions of pues and its variants according to position across varieties?

• How can the uses of pues and its variants in the corpora examined be characterized overall? What categories of discourse markers do they constitute?

As such, the present study aims to contribute to the characterization of pues in Spanish, and the theory of discourse markers more generally, and to the study of regional pragmatic variation across varieties of Spanish (García and Placencia, 2011, Placencia, 2011). The paper is organized as follows: in section 2, we start with a review of the literature on discourse markers with a focus on pues in Peninsular (section 2.1) and in Latin American (section 2.2) varieties of Spanish. A description of the data employed and a consideration of methodological issues are provided in section 3. In section 4.1 we look at the frequency of pues and its variants across data sets. The distribution of pues and its variants across varieties is examined in the next section in relation to situation (section 4.2). In section 4.3 we look at the turn and act position that pues and its variants occupy. In section 4.4, we consider the functions of pues and its variants according to their position in a given turn or act. Finally, in section 4.5 we discuss the type of discourse marker that pues constitutes – connector or operator – on the basis of our results.