Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics

Published by De Gruyter

Volume 6 Issue 2 -

Issue of Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available December 1, 2018

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

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Articles

Open Access November 22, 2018

The Functions of the Spanish Approximators Como and Como Que in Institutional and Non-Institutional Discursive Contexts

Abril Jimenez, Nydia Flores-Ferrán

Page range: 145-171

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Abstract

The Spanish approximators como and como que (“sort of,” “as if,” “kind of,” “seems,” “like”) serve multiple pragmatic functions. They can be employed in similar contexts to express vagueness when speakers experience uncertainty or to hedge and avoid being straightforward. Furthermore, these forms can alternate according to context since they represent two ways of saying the same thing. This study investigated the use of como and como que in two speech events: narratives of personal experience (non-institutional) and therapeutic interviews (institutional), which were generated by Spanish speakers of several varieties, educational levels, and lengths of residence in the United States. The study was informed by the theoretical frameworks of sociolinguistic and pragmatic variation, and the data were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings revealed that while como was the preferred form among the speakers of the study they employed como que more often in the therapeutic interviews. Thus, both discourse and the pragmatic functions conditioned the use of these approximators.

Open Access November 22, 2018

The Construction of Advertising Discourse by the Use of the Second-Person Object Te and the Clitic Se

María José Serrano

Page range: 173-196

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the variation of the second-person object clitic te [‘you’] and the clitic se [lit. ‘it’] in advertising discourse from a cognitive viewpoint. The main explanatory notion will be cognitive salience; both clitics, te and se , exhibit this to varying degrees. The second-person te is more salient than the clitic se ; therefore, the meanings conveyed by each in media discourse will be notably different. Results indicate that the distribution and usage of the clitics te vs. se constitutes a different strategy of persuasion in advertising discourse. In general terms, te is used when a special deictic stance is needed, such as indexing a second-person as a potential consumer of the product or idea, whereas se tends to appear in utterances that describe the general and objective benefits of the product or idea advertised, denoting a desubjectivizing stance. The sociosituational distribution of this variation according to the target consumers will be analyzed.

Open Access November 27, 2018

Latinas for Trump Analysis of Processes of Identification and the Use of Narratives to Construct Subject-Positions

Mayela Zambrano

Page range: 197-214

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Abstract

The public and commercial spheres constantly address the largest ethnic minority in the United States, people with ancestry or from a Latin American country, as a homogenous group under the ethnopolitical terms “Latinos,” “Hispanics,” and even “Mexicans.” This panethnic view, and the negative stereotypes associated with it, was especially visible during the 2016 presidential election. While the majority of Latinos found Donald Trump’s remarks on “Mexicans” offensive to the Latin community as a whole, a large number of people still supported his opinions, even those belonging to the “Latino” community. Even more so, women of Latino heritage still supported a nominee that went against their own advance in society given his constant misogynistic comments. In this essay, I analyze the groundings for this apparent contradiction in the preference for said candidate. I argue that these women’s political preference is a tool with which they build their identity in the U.S. Besides, I explore the ways in which individuals linguistically construct their own identity in three ways (i) by actively doing the identification instead of merely receiving it by an unknown agent; (ii) by choosing the self-representation of their preference, and (iii) by finding commonalities and bonding with other individuals they deem part of their group. Through this approach, I analyze semiotic processes, such as intertextuality, use of pronouns, and discourse alignment, that are used to construct identifications of the self that go beyond imposed categories, such as gender and ethnicity.

Book Reviews

Open Access November 16, 2018

Adriana Bolívar: Political discourse as dialogue. A Latin American perspective

Reseñado por María Florencia Tenaglia

Page range: 215-221

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About this journal

This journal has ceased publication with De Gruyter

Objective

Sociocultural Pragmatics (SOPRAG) is a biannual publication that encourages the international dissemination of research results on theoretical and applied linguistics, focusing on social and cultural aspects of the Spanish language in all its forms and expressions. SOPRAG publishes high-quality papers that are useful to establish the interdependence between pragmatic, social, and cultural aspects of the Spanish language and its relations with other languages. SOPRAG welcomes manuscripts with thematic, theoretical, empirical, and terminological aspects in the area of Pragmatics, with an emphasis on sociocultural perspectives. SOPRAG accepts original papers preferably written in Spanish, but will consider manuscripts written in other Romance languages and English.

Sociocultural Pragmatics (SOPRAG) is published in two issues, 500-page volume per year, in print and electronic formats, with a peer, double-blind, review process. The electronic format of the journal is entirely open access, without authorship charges or readership embargoes. SOPRAG is internationally indexed in databases such as EBSCO, SCOPUS, and MLA, among many others.

Sociocultural Pragmatics (SOPRAG) is published with the financial support of Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council, Ministry of Education and Research, Sweden), Stockholm University, and EDICE Program (edice.org).

Topics

Applied linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Spanish language
Pragmatics
Sociocultural linguistics