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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 29:1 (2019) ► pp.83–106

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Searches and clicks in Peninsular Spanish

 | University of St. Thomas
 | University of St. Thomas
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 7 March 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18020.pin
Abstract
The current study analyzes the use of click sounds in Peninsular Spanish with a focus on those that occur when speakers are searching for what to say and signaling a particular stance. The data corpus consists of interviews with 18 speakers from Spain who produce a total of 281 clicks. We consider clicks to be a non-lexical discourse marker that conveys information to the listener regarding how an utterance should be interpreted. By applying a discourse-pragmatic approach from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, we examine contextual and co-textual factors that co-occur with the click and contribute to a multimodal display consisting of pauses, fillers, repetitions, prolongations, gestures and object of search. The quantitative results indicate some statistically significant differences with regard to how clicks interact with the linguistic and extralinguistic environments. Qualitatively, we show evidence supporting the idea that clicks are part of a larger multimodal communicative activity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants and data
    • 3.2Classification of clicks
    • 3.3Object of search, gestures and click environment
    • 3.4Research questions
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Quantitative results
    • 4.2Qualitative results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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Cited by (4)

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Andries, Fien, Katharina Meissl, Clarissa de Vries, Kurt Feyaerts, Bert Oben, Paul Sambre, Myriam Vermeerbergen & Geert Brône
2023. Multimodal stance-taking in interaction—A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Communication 8 DOI logo
Ogden, Richard
2020. Audibly Not Saying Something with Clicks. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:1 ► pp. 66 ff. DOI logo
Ogden, Richard
2021. Swallowing in Conversation. Frontiers in Communication 6 DOI logo
Vigil, Donny & Derrin Pinto
2020. An experimental study of the detection of clicks in English. Pragmatics & Cognition 27:2 ► pp. 457 ff. DOI logo

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