Abstract

JINGYUAN, Hu. The television series as a corpus for the sociopragmatic study of the diminutive in Spanish. Leng. [online]. 2022, vol.50, n.1, pp.115-145.  Epub Jan 18, 2022. ISSN 0120-3479.  https://doi.org/10.25100/lenguaje.v50i1.11470.

The diminutive is a complex grammatical phenomenon widely used in Spanish. The concepts and the expressions that make up the diminutive and guide its use go far beyond mere references to “small” size. Through an oral corpus composed of television series produced and aired in the last five years (2014-2019) in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Chile, the use of the diminutive has been analyzed from a morphological, pragmatic and sociolinguistic point of view. In the preparation of the corpus, the feasibility of using audiovisual media as a reference corpus has been taken into account in terms of immediacy, communicative distance and simulative orality. In turn, the delimitation criterion of Spanish-speaking areas and the theory on the study of communicative interaction are also part of the methodological and theoretical frameworks. The result of the analysis of the aforementioned corpus reflects the multifunctional characteristics of the diminutive as well as the sociolect and generational variation seen in its use. We have confirmed the viability of diminutive attachment to different lexical categories. Regarding the sociocultural aspects of the diminutive as it relates to variables of sex and social class, a slight predominance of use has been observed in female speakers and in those from lower socioeconomic classes respectively. Regarding the generational variable, a balance in use among different age groups has been identified.

Keywords : diminutive; Spanish; corpus; sociopragmatic; television series.

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