Las tres autoras integran el Proyecto PICT 2010-0893 (ANPCyT) Escribir y leer para aprender en universidades e institutos de formación docente. Concepciones y prácticas en cátedras de diversas áreas disciplinares, dirigido por la Dra. Paula Carlino.

This paper reports the results of a contrastive analysis of the instances of attenuation occurring in a set of Argentine and Spanish colloquial conversations. Attenuation-understood as a pragmatic phenomenon reducing the illocutionary force of communicative acts, which involves face and the speakers' responsibilities for their messages (Caffi 1999, 2007; Thaler; Albelda 2016)-has been studied to a significant extent in the Spanish language, beginning in the 1990s, from the perspective of politeness studies (Haverkate; Briz 1995, 2007), pragmatics (Schneider) and sociolinguistics (Samper Hernández; Cestero). However, studies concentrating on the comparison between its diatopic varieties are scarce (Briz 2007; Albelda 2008). This study quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the attenuation resources utilized in colloquial conversations between speakers aged 20-34 at the higher and middle social strata in the cities of Tucumán (Argentina) and Valencia (Spain). The analysis was based on a methodological data sheet (Albelda/others) with the aim of finding the main similarities and differences between both diatopic varieties.

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