A set of phraseological units that convey disagreement in Spanish, English and Norwegian teenage language are observed from three perspectives in this paper: the phraseological, the pragmatic-discursive and the contrastive perspective. The underlying assumption of the analysis is that the… read more
This paper discusses the use of the Spanish expression en plan as a pragmatic marker, more specifically as a hedge in Madrid boys’ and girls’ spontaneous conversation, when used as a politeness device to save both the speaker’s and the hearer’s face. This function is the most frequent one in the… read more
The Spanish particle lo can appear in three different syntactic structures which are described in this paper. Depending on the structure in which it is inserted, lo can have three different functions: pronoun, intensifier and emphatic particle/element.
At the same time, the Norwegian definite… read more
This corpus-based article explores London and Madrid teenagers’ use of phatic expressions as a politeness device in their everyday conversations. The starting-point for the study is Leech’s ‘Phatic Maxim’, which he suggests as a supplement to the four maxims making up Grice’s Cooperative Principle. read more