Hedging your bets - the use of yo in face-to-face interaction
Miranda Stewart
by
University of Strathclyde
Abstract
Studies of the presence or absence of the subject personal pronoun in Spanish
have typically taken place within the fields of theoretical syntax or variationist
sociolinguistics and have sought to correlate pronominal occurrence either
with linguistic features or with speaker variables. This study places the
occurrence of the first person subject pronoun yo within the framework
of interactional pragmatics and investigates the potential effects of extra-linguistic
factors on the linguistic choices of speakers within a broad framework
of Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. It argues that an explanation
for the high occurrence of yo with verbs of cognition can be found
in the interactional need for speakers to hedge their opinions. Consequently,
the use of yo as a hedge to the Gricean maxim of quality can serve
simultaneously to protect the speakerâs face and to allow the construction
of self. Pragmatic rather than linguistic factors make yo a multifunctional
linguistic resource; its inherent ambivalence leads speakers to use it
and hearers to interpret it in the ways that they do.
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