Cover not available
Article published In:
Spanish in Context
Vol. 20:3 (2023) ► pp.464–489

Discourse markers in Spanish in the Tijuana-San Diego border area

| Western Washington University
| University of California, San Diego
This study examines the use of discourse markers among speakers of Spanish residing in Tijuana, Mexican immigrants in San Diego, and heritage Spanish speakers in San Diego. We find a core set of discourse markers that is common to all speakers, as well as subsets of discourse markers for Tijuana, San Diego immigrant, and San Diego heritage speakers. Four English discourse markers are attested in the border: okay as a general, established borrowing; so only among immigrant and heritage speakers; and like and you know only among heritage speakers. In a language-contact situation, discourse markers whose lexical content is less analyzable and whose functions are more operational detach first from the pragmatically-dominant language (Matras 1998). We find that the operational properties of okay, like, and you know make them borrowable into the Spanish of the border. However, so is borrowed in San Diego with operational and content-related features by heritage speakers, and with content-related features only by immigrant speakers.
Keywords: discourse markers, Spanish in the US, language contact
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse markers and pragmatic detachability
  • 3.Discourse markers in U.S. Spanish
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Speakers and the language-contact situation
    • 4.2Interview segments
    • 4.3Repertoire of discourse markers
  • 5.Quantitative analysis
    • 5.1Number of speakers
    • 5.2Frequency of use
    • 5.3Discussion of quantitative analysis
  • 6.Qualitative analysis: English discourse markers in the Spanish of the border area
    • 6.1The status of okay in Tijuana and San Diego
    • 6.2The status of so in Tijuana and San Diego
    • 6.3Pragmatic detachability of English discourse markers in Border Spanish
  • 7.Conclusion: The status of discourse markers in the Tijuana-San Diego border area
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.21002.mat
References (23)
References
Aaron, Jessi Elana. 2004. “So respetamos un tradición del uno al otro.” Spanish in Context 1(2): 161–179. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blakemore, Diane. 2002. Relevance and linguistic meaning: The semantics and pragmatics of discourse markers (Vol. 991). Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Jean E. Fox Tree. 2002. “Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking.” Cognition, 84 (1): 73–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crible, Ludivine, Lisbeth Degand, and Gaetanelle Gilquin. 2017. “The clustering of discourse markers and filled pauses: A corpus-based French-English study of (dis) fluency.” Languages in Contrast 17 (1): 69–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Alexandra L., and Jean E. Fox Tree. 2009. “A quick, gradient bilingual dominance scale.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12(3): 273–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox Tree, Jean E. 2010. “Discourse markers across speakers and settings.” Language and Linguistics Compass 4 (5): 269–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Janet M. 2001. “The principle of pragmatic detachability in borrowing: English-original discourse markers in Pennsylvania German.” Linguistics 39 (2): 351–369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lipski, John M. 2005. “Code-switching or borrowing? No sé so no puedo decir, you know.” In Selected proceedings of the second workshop on Spanish sociolinguistics, ed. by Lotfi Sayahi and Maurice Westmoreland, 1–15. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Maschler, Yael, and Deborah Schiffrin. 2015. “Discourse markers: Language, meaning, and context.” In The handbook of discourse analysis, ed. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 189–221. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matras, Yael. 1998. “Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing.” Linguistics 36 (2): 281–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moore, John & R. Mata. 2105. “Emerging language change in high-proficiency heritage Spanish speakers”. 10th UK Language Variation and Change (UKLVC) conference. York University. 3 September 2015.
Otheguy, Ricardo. and Ana Celia Zentella. 2012. Spanish in New York. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Segalowitz, Norman, and Barbara F. Freed. 2004. “Context, contact, and cognition in oral fluency acquisition: Learning Spanish in at home and study abroad contexts.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26 (02): 173–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 1994. Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Clarendon. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swerts, Marc. 1998. “Filled pauses as markers of discourse structure.” Journal of Pragmatics 30 (4): 485–496. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tavizón, Jessica Maribel. 2014. The Spanish Language Proficiency of Sequential Bilingual Children and the Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University.Google Scholar
Torres, Lourdes. 2002. “Bilingual discourse markers in Puerto Rican Spanish.” Language in Society 31 (01): 65–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torres, Lourdes, and Kim Potowski. 2008. “A comparative study of bilingual discourse markers in Chicago Mexican, Puerto Rican, and MexiRican Spanish.” International Journal of Bilingualism 12 (4): 263–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valdés, Guadalupe, and Michelle Geoffrion-Vinci. 1998. “Chicano Spanish: The problem of the “underdeveloped” code in bilingual repertoires.” The Modern Language Journal 82 (4): 473–501.Google Scholar
Vickers, Caroline, and Ryan Goble. 2011. “Well, now, okey dokey: English discourse markers in Spanish-language medical consultations.” Canadian Modern Language Review 67 (4): 536–567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watanabe, Michiko, Keikichi Hirose, Yasuharu Den, and Nobuaki Minematsu. 2008. “Filled pauses as cues to the complexity of upcoming phrases for native and non- native listeners.” Speech Communication 50 (2): 81–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zentella, Ana Celia. 1997. Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar