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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 15:1 (2018) ► pp.1–26

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Variation in hesitation

The case of este vs. eh in Latin American Spanish

 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Published online: 31 May 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.00001.gra
Abstract
This study explored the influence of social and syntactic-pragmatic factors on a speaker’s choice between hesitation markers este and eh in oral discourse. Data collected from San Juan (PR), Mexico City, Montevideo, and Medellín were analyzed as a large corpus and on an individual country basis. Este was found to be the most prevalent hesitation marker overall and within three of the four countries studied. On an overall level, the factors of city, education level, gender, and position of the marker within the turn were found to be statistically significant to hesitation marker choice, while age was not. On a per-city basis, education was significant everywhere, age and gender were significant everywhere except Medellín, and turn position was significant everywhere except San Juan. The lack of uniformity in the results suggests that speakers’ choice between este and eh is affected differently by these factors in each area.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction – hesitation markers in Spanish
  • 2.Previous studies on este and eh as hesitation markers
  • 3.The current study: Aims and hypotheses
  • 4.Data and methodology
    • 4.1The corpus data
    • 4.2Methodology: Data mining, coding, and VARBRUL analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Overall results
    • 5.2San Juan
    • 5.3Mexico City
    • 5.4Montevideo
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Research hypothesis 1: Marker preference
    • 6.2Research hypothesis 2: Speaker age as a factor
    • 6.3Research hypothesis 3: Education level as a factor
    • 6.4Research hypothesis 4: Gender as a factor
    • 6.5Research hypothesis 5: Turn position as a factor
    • 6.6Research hypothesis 6: City of origin as a factor
  • 7.Conclusions and implications for future research
  • Notes
  • Corpus data and research tools
  • References
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