The evolution of the reference to the participants in the parliamentary debate in Catalan (1932-2013)

Abstract

This article presents summarily the first results of a research in progress that aims to study the evolution of the linguistic and discursive strategies used for the reference to participants in the Parliament of Catalonia in the period 1932-38 (during the Spanish Second Republic) and from 1980, the year of the recovery of the Catalan democratic institutions, to 2013. The analysis combines qualitative and quantitative methods and shows several tendencies in the evolution of the use of the different forms and strategies. The incorporation of Goffman (1981)’s participation frameworks to the analysis provides additional data that, once described and interpreted, give a much more accurate answer to the questions set out than the analysis of only person deictic forms and honorifics. And this is relevant not only for parliamentary debates but also for any other speech event with more than two participants.