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In:Interdisciplinary Approaches to Romance Linguistics: In honor of Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio
Edited by Mark Amengual and Amanda Dalola
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 45] 2025
► pp. 263–292

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Chapter 11
Pus ‘ta cabrón

Variation of the discourse marker pues in the Spanish of Southern San Diego

 | San Diego Mesa College
Published online: 2 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.45.11avi
Abstract
This study examines linguistic variation in the discourse marker “pues” within Southern San Diego Spanish. Pues, ubiquitous in Spanish, translates to ‘well,’ ‘so,’ ‘since,’ and ‘then.’ The study focused on the variable pues that has four variants — standard pues [pwes] and stigmatized forms pos [pos], pus [pus], and p’s [ps] — the research analyzes the overall rates of the use of the variants and associated social factors. The data gathered for this research consisted of 47 sociolinguistic interviews from Speakers that live in Southern San Diego Spanish. The data sample was composed of 19 male and 28 female speakers ranging from 18 to 83 years of age. Employing quantitative variationist analysis, 4,421 tokens were statistically analyzed in R. Findings reveal pues as the most frequent variant, followed by pus. Gender emerges as a significant variation indicator, with females favoring [pwes] and males favor [pus]. This work enhances understanding of linguistic variation in underexplored Southern California and contributes to borderlands sociolinguistic research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.The region of study
  • 4.Discourse markers
    • 4.1Spanish DMs
    • 4.2Discourse marker pues
      • 4.2.1Exploration of variation in the discourse marker pues
      • 4.2.2The Sociolinguistic agenda
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Participant outreach
    • 5.2Background questionnaire
    • 5.3Sociolinguistic interview
  • 6.Variables of the study
    • 6.1Dependent variable: Phonetic
    • 6.2Social variables
    • 6.3Data processing
  • 7.Results
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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