SOCIO-PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE MARKERS ENTONCES AND BUENO IN THE SPEECH OF CARTAGENA DE INDIAS (COLOMBIA)

Abstract

From the doctoral research of Cuartas López (2023), both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses are applied to the examination of the uses of the discourse markers "then" and "well" in the PRESEEA corpus from Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). Considering their sociolinguistic variation, the variables analyzed include pre-stratificatory social factors (gender, age, and education level) and post-stratificatory factors (profession, income, and housing conditions). In addition, the analysis takes into account the discursive sequence (descriptive, narrative, expository, and argumentative) in which the marker is found. The uses of both markers, characterized, like all of them, by their multifunctionality (Schiffrin 2001: 62), have been organized into a series of pragmatic-discursive functions. The meanings of "then" and "well" are explained as the result of the discursivization of their literal and original meaning, which is crucial for positing a constant core in all of them.