A Pragmatic Analysis of Che as a Politeness Strategy in Argentine Spanish
Document Type
Paper Presentation
Presenter Language
Spanish
Research Area
Pragmatics and discourse analysis
Location
MBSC Dodge Room 302A
Start Date
17-10-2024 5:30 PM
End Date
17-10-2024 6:00 PM
Abstract
A Pragmatic Analysis of Che as a Politeness Strategy in Argentine Spanish
To date, little research has been done on the use of the pragmatic expression che in Argentine Spanish (AS). Previous authors (Carranza, 1993, 2000; Borzi, 2016) have presented several uses of che in AS and classified che as deictic, or context-dependent, in nature. Carranza (2000) also states that che can ratify the closeness of a relationship between two interactants and signal a high level of interest in final position in Questions. García (2007) analyzes che, when used in dispreferred responses, through the lens of Politeness Theory. In this study, we provide an analysis of che as used in Declaratives and Commands Speech Acts as a positive politeness strategy.
We argue that che is used by native speakers of AS as a politeness strategy to maintain the positive face wants of both the speaker and the hearer. We examine the functions of che as a politeness strategy in felicitous and infelicitous contexts, providing constructed and corpus manipulated examples for each Speech Act. The examples analyzed ratify che’s deictic nature, as its presence can modify the interpretation of an utterance in different contexts. Given che’s deictic nature, we propose a further analysis of this pragmatic expression based on Wiltschko et al. (2018)’s methodology to find the principal function of linguistic expressions according to different contexts.
Our analysis contributes to the existing body of literature on multifunctionality and pragmatic dialectical variation in Spanish. This analysis goes beyond previous work on che in AS, as it proposes that che’s function as a politeness strategy works as a connection across the various uses of the pragmatic expression in this dialect. Therefore, this project also contributes to previous work on Argentine Spanish and how speakers of this variety belong to a positive politeness culture (García, 2007). While previous studies also make note of che as a way of maintaining positive politeness in interrogations, we provide a deeper analysis of this phenomenon while also focusing on its pragmatic effects when it is employed in other sentence types.
Keywords: Pragmatics, Argentine Spanish, Discourse Markers, Politeness.
References
Borzi, C. (2016). El che argentino: Sus contextos de uso y su significado. Philologia hispalensis, 30(1), 9–32. https://doi.org/10.12795/PH.2016.i30.02
Carranza, I.E. (1993). Contextualización y "Expresiones Pragmáticas": "Che" como señal de marco. Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Filología and Lingüística aplicada para América Latina (ALFAL). Veracruz, México.
Carranza, I. E. (2000). Contribuciones y desafíos para la comparación y la enseñanza de las lenguas. Oralia: Análisis Del Discurso Oral, 3, 53–73.
https://doi.org/10.25115/oralia.v3i1.8507
García, C. (2007). “Ché, mirá, vos sabés que no no voy a poder”: How Argentineans Refuse an
Invitation. Hispania, 90(3), 551. https://doi.org/10.2307/20063564
Wiltschko, M., Denis, D., & D’Arcy, A. (2018). Deconstructing variation in pragmatic function: A transdisciplinary case study. Language in Society, 47(4), 569–599.
A Pragmatic Analysis of Che as a Politeness Strategy in Argentine Spanish
MBSC Dodge Room 302A
A Pragmatic Analysis of Che as a Politeness Strategy in Argentine Spanish
To date, little research has been done on the use of the pragmatic expression che in Argentine Spanish (AS). Previous authors (Carranza, 1993, 2000; Borzi, 2016) have presented several uses of che in AS and classified che as deictic, or context-dependent, in nature. Carranza (2000) also states that che can ratify the closeness of a relationship between two interactants and signal a high level of interest in final position in Questions. García (2007) analyzes che, when used in dispreferred responses, through the lens of Politeness Theory. In this study, we provide an analysis of che as used in Declaratives and Commands Speech Acts as a positive politeness strategy.
We argue that che is used by native speakers of AS as a politeness strategy to maintain the positive face wants of both the speaker and the hearer. We examine the functions of che as a politeness strategy in felicitous and infelicitous contexts, providing constructed and corpus manipulated examples for each Speech Act. The examples analyzed ratify che’s deictic nature, as its presence can modify the interpretation of an utterance in different contexts. Given che’s deictic nature, we propose a further analysis of this pragmatic expression based on Wiltschko et al. (2018)’s methodology to find the principal function of linguistic expressions according to different contexts.
Our analysis contributes to the existing body of literature on multifunctionality and pragmatic dialectical variation in Spanish. This analysis goes beyond previous work on che in AS, as it proposes that che’s function as a politeness strategy works as a connection across the various uses of the pragmatic expression in this dialect. Therefore, this project also contributes to previous work on Argentine Spanish and how speakers of this variety belong to a positive politeness culture (García, 2007). While previous studies also make note of che as a way of maintaining positive politeness in interrogations, we provide a deeper analysis of this phenomenon while also focusing on its pragmatic effects when it is employed in other sentence types.
Keywords: Pragmatics, Argentine Spanish, Discourse Markers, Politeness.
References
Borzi, C. (2016). El che argentino: Sus contextos de uso y su significado. Philologia hispalensis, 30(1), 9–32. https://doi.org/10.12795/PH.2016.i30.02
Carranza, I.E. (1993). Contextualización y "Expresiones Pragmáticas": "Che" como señal de marco. Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Filología and Lingüística aplicada para América Latina (ALFAL). Veracruz, México.
Carranza, I. E. (2000). Contribuciones y desafíos para la comparación y la enseñanza de las lenguas. Oralia: Análisis Del Discurso Oral, 3, 53–73.
https://doi.org/10.25115/oralia.v3i1.8507
García, C. (2007). “Ché, mirá, vos sabés que no no voy a poder”: How Argentineans Refuse an
Invitation. Hispania, 90(3), 551. https://doi.org/10.2307/20063564
Wiltschko, M., Denis, D., & D’Arcy, A. (2018). Deconstructing variation in pragmatic function: A transdisciplinary case study. Language in Society, 47(4), 569–599.