QUOTATING DISCOURSE MARKERS IN SPANISH: SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND GEOLECTAL DISTRIBUTION

Abstract

This article presents, comparatively, the results obtained from the study of the social behavior and the diatopic distribution of quotation discourse markers in nine Spanish and eighteen Latin American geolects from the PRESEEA oral corpus. In particular, from a sociolinguistic perspective, we focus on the relationship between the use of these discourse units and the sociolinguistic variables gender, age, and educational level, but also on their productivity in the materials of each study geographical area. The comparison of the use of direct quotation discourse markers in these Hispanic cities shows differentiated tendencies, found in the types of markers that predominate in the Spanish language of some urban areas, such as en plan, pues in Spain or pues, entonces, de repente, dizque, como(que) in Latin America, as well as in their distribution according to social variables.