Approximators and mitigators in Chilean Spanish: the case of 'como' and 'como que'

Abstract

This article analyses the use of the approximators como and como que in Chilean Spanish, and the link between their approximative semantic value and pragmatic mitigation. Previous works have given the marker como an approximative value (Mihatsch, 2009, 2010; Jørgensen and Stenstrøm 2009; Jørgensen, 2011; Holmvik, 2011; Kornfeld, 2013; Kern, 2014; Jiménez and Flores-Ferrán, 2018), and also a mitigating one (Puga, 1997; Briz, 1998; Jørgensen, 2011; Holmvik, 2011; Kornfeld, 2013, Panussis, 2016; Mondaca, 2017; Panussis and San Martín, 2017). Thus, the objective here is to analyze the relationship between semantic approximation and pragmatic mitigation through these particles, in order to establish whether all those approximative uses of como and como que also perform a mitigating function. Likewise, this paper seeks to propose a general description of those contexts that motivate Chilean speakers to approximate and mitigate their discourse through como and como que. For this purposes, 24 sociolinguistic interviews extracted from the corpus compiled in the Fondecyt Project 11110211 have been used. The main results show that como is a semantic approximator that, in those contexts where the speaker seeks to safeguard his or her face, acquires a pragmatic mitigation function, while como que, on the other hand, is a particle which predominant function is to mitigate.

Prefabricated orality and the translation of Spanish and Catalan approximators into English in a TV series

“…Table 1 also shows the pragmatic meaning(s) of the corpus. All labels have been taken from previous studies mentioned above (Jørgensen, 2011;Mondaca, 2019;Repede, 2020), except for the value of Hikma 22(2) (2023), 285 -307 'explicative'. This pragmatic function has been found elsewhere for other informal DMs in Peninsular Spanish (Jørgensen and Martínez López, 2007), and it provides space for the speaker to consider what they are about to say, to formulate their speech better or to summarize what has been said.…”

“…In Chilean Spanish, also amongst young people, Mondaca (2019) finds that these markers fulfill functions of numerical approximation, exemplification, direct discourse introduction, or filler. Given the predominance of attenuation, some researchers have proposed several subfunctions of this value in the discourse: self-protection, prevention, and image repair (Mondaca, 2019;Repede, 2020). These meanings also have been mentioned in the literature of the English discourse marker like, which may also serve as an approximative or hedge, quotative, a focus particle, or an exemplifier (Fuller, 2003;Miller, 2009).…”

El discurso referido como recurso atenuador en la ciudad de Sevilla

“…producción como a su función, a través del análisis pormenorizado de todas las dimensiones variables que inciden en su uso" (Cestero, 2012: 234). Por tanto, cada vez hay más trabajos centrados en el estudio de un determinado recurso formal con valor atenuador, como es el caso de los aproximadores como y como que (Mondaca, 2019), los verbos doxásticos de tipo creer, pensar, opinar (Soler Bonafont, 2016), y también los que establecen taxonomías sobre los mecanismos de atenuación en las distintas variedades del español: Cestero (2011Cestero ( , 2012Cestero ( , 2015Cestero ( y 2017 y Molina (2005Molina ( y 2015 en el español hablado en Madrid; Albelda (2011Albelda ( , 2012Albelda ( , 2013Albelda ( y 2018) y Estellés y Cabedo (2016) para el español de Valencia; Béjar (2015) en el español granadino; Samper (2013 y 2017) en el español de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Torres y Rodríguez (2017) en el español de Barranquilla y Palacios (2017 y 2019) sobre el español hablado en Puebla (México).…”